Dead Man Walking
Clad in a black velvet suit, I came out of the house, my eyes red and swollen and my heart in pain. I carried with me my father’s portrait. The embalmer upon seeing me told me to place the picture in the car’s front window pane. I did what he ordered me and proceeded to join the funeral march. The solemn music of “Amazing Grace” filled the air and the emptiness of my heart. I would have cried the instant that song played but I couldn’t… I would not dare to believe… I’m not going to tell to the rest of the world that I’ve lost my father… A great person I’ve lived with and lived for for 15 years. Days after, I sat all by myself thinking on what’s happening with him. It was the end, right? But many people out of nowhere would pop out and tell me all sorts of things like he took the form of a butterfly and a lizard. I laughed at them, telling them that my father rests now in the bosom of the Father and that he’s not a part of this world anymore. I wouldn’t want to believe that he passed away but my heart tells me that it’s now a reality, that death can stab you at the back anytime. Though the pain still remains a hard rock on my heart, the memory I had of him made me accept my fate… Those long years I had of him took away the worry and fear, unlike others who never saw the light of death’s candle. I got the greatest shock of my life when one of my aunts related to my family the story of my father getting back at her because of cigarette-smoking. Almost all my father’s siblings are cigarette smokers. When he got sick of cancer, he told my visiting aunts and uncles not to smoke anymore because it would ruin their lives and their family… One day, my father “invisibly lighted a cigar” in the living room. My two aunts were having their snacks adjacent to that room. A gushing wind simply made its entrance unto their nostrils and they smelled the “soothing cigarette fire”. No one and nothing could decipher where that smoke came from… Goose pimples covered their thin skins and horrific faces shattered their sunny smiles. I started to question myself…I’m unbelieving in ghosts so I dared ask myself, “Would my Dad be actually living again? ” In short, I’m asking if there is really life after death. The Bible tells that at Judgment day, the dead will come to rise and together with the living will be judged according to the merits of their deeds while they live here on earth… Buddha’s reincarnation shares that man is reincarnated to any form of life for purification and punishment purposes. My religion tells me that the only way to purify or punish a soul is to wash himself clean in purgatory or to wallow himself in the fiery fires of hell. But why do some people bother to think that a person’s soul goes on to take the shape of an irrational animal or a sensory-absent plant after death? If Brahma wants that man be purified or punished due to the misdeeds he has done while took the form of an atman, this all-pervading Reality should have made this earthly soul take again his humanity… Animals and Plants have souls but do these souls think, feel, act, and speak like humans do? It is by these actions that make humans different from these biological forms written. Rationalism permeates the use f reasoning and reasoning belongs solely to man’s full use…
But what if Brahma commands the soul to take the form of another body and not to its original body, would man be able to make amends for his heavy and light sins? Take note, Brahma has no angels or other prophets like Buddha to help that man… Would man be able to remember the things of his past? The only thing that could happen is to live his wayward life before in the present. It is only the original body who knows how to manipulate the desires of the soul… If Brahma wishes to send the soul to its original body, how could it happen when in fact, the body now is decomposed? I’d believe that witchcraft or sorcery would do raise back man to life. I don’t think that man can be born again and again… If man has the knowledge of what Brahma does to his soul would man ever be tired of living the life he’s not used to or living his life again? For me, death would bring me back to God’s bosom, to Satan’s abode or the angels and saints’ guidance. God is the only One who could judge me… I need to give back the worth of what humanity has done to my soul. So, the butterflies and the lizards that people see are not owners of human souls. They’re the kinds that appear out of nowhere which serve as reminders for people to live well and good. My father visiting my aunts would tell them that it’s unfinished business he was there for. All the memories, legacies and things the dead left behind are reminders for us to reach life to its fullest good and to give back what we owe from God to others. You ask me and I’ll tell now what I have already done… I’ve put away all my bad desires and live life the way God wants me to do… Maybe, one day I could be with my Father and together, we’ll face the Creator. And maybe, my father would not rise at these times to be a dead man walking…