pain

Death and the true face of life (A tribute to those we lost in the Egypt Air Crash)

Illustration by Eritrea Studio

Death, such a comfort to the dead and a torture to those living behind. It shocks our hearts with its suddenness and baffles our heads with its blunt revelation of a fact we spend our lives oblivious to – Our mortality. We’re all temporary, our lives are temporary, we know that fact but always keep it in the back of our minds, shove it backwards into this dark closet where it’d be safely hidden from our conscious thinking. Because it’s scary; it’s beyond our imagination; for how can we imagine we’re no longer existent! How can we imagine we lost the only life we know of and worked so hard for! How can we imagine our souls departing the body in which it’s always dwelt and leaving it motionless, meaningless and lifeless!

Death comes in its different harsh ways and reminds us that this is the ultimate truth we can’t escape. Wherever we go, however far we journey, it’ll reach us when the time comes. And the hardest part is that we have to see it happen to our loved ones – another kind of death while we’re still alive. And no matter how many times it happens, it sill shocks us beyond our heads, still cuts through our hearts. The pain of loss is insurmountable and everlasting, fading and heightening to the tumultuous waves of time. In the moment it fades, we continue living caught up in the regular motions of life. And in the moment it hits us strong, we’re enraged at life because it doesn’t stop; it just goes on no matter the pain, no matter the loss.

Nevertheless, I believe in every hardship we face in life, there’s a precious lesson to be learnt, an unrevealed wisdom to be shortly revealed. Witnessing the death of other people, whether we know them or not, is one of life’s greatest hardships that opens our eyes to the true mistrustful face of life. It shows us how unreliable life can be; neither can it be trusted nor guaranteed. And only through an incident as appalling and shocking as death that we can see if for what it really is; just a bumpy bridge that varies in length – for some it’s short and for some it takes longer – that we have to cross in order to reach our final destination, our true life, our eternity in God’s heaven or – God forbid – hell.

That’s why we have to pay attention to how we run our lives, how we handle our relationships with God, ourselves and other people. We have to keep our hearts in constant check and our deeds in constant inspection to guarantee both good deeds and good intentions. We have to forgive, give and be kind, to show love in every time and way possible because that’s the only way our hearts are able to survive the cruelty of our temporariness, the only way our hearts are able to heal.

My heart bleeds for all those we lost in the Egypt Air crash. And to all those who stayed behind, may your hearts find their way to peace and recovery.

Written byJihad Mahmoud

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