Shadows Fade
In the book of one who is dead, things fade into shadow, go into mist and vanish. There is the fading of memories, of homes, of friends. There is a peculiar tingling in the nerves. It does not seem to be unpleasant. Yet when you pass out, you shall find yourself so weakened that you will be in desperate need of rest. All this is pleasant to the living, but it is hard for the dead. It is difficult to explain why it is so.
It is like the coming home of an exile who has no home. The true home that a man has built for himself is the body. Then he becomes a stranger in the place he calls home. But a dead man is more like an exile.
There are many dead men. Even in the life of one who is dead it is difficult to keep count. There are moments when one is in doubt about the very existence of the living. The dead are here in this world, but they are not here. It is this absence that we call death. They are here, but they are not. They are close, but the near is not near to the near, and the far is close to the far. It is very hard to believe in the living. It is hard to accept the fact that they are real, that there is nothing to give us a clue to their world. It is hard to believe that they are people of flesh and blood. Yet it is hard to imagine that they are only shadows.
Now and then you meet an old friend, and, knowing that he or she is dead, you try to think of some way in which you can say hello. If you do so, you feel awkward. You have no home to which to go and for which to prepare. You have no past and no future. You cannot say hello. You do not know how to say goodbye. Your country is a ghost country. It seems empty. You do not even know why it is empty.
People are puzzled. They say, “You are unhappy.” They are not quite sure why it is. They do not understand why it is so. They are not really very sure that there is such a thing as unhappiness. They think that there are only different kinds of happiness. And they are not really sure that there are different kinds of happiness.
The dead are very patient. They do not complain. You know that they know that
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