Once came a lady oh so lovely in a casket. They polished her and dolled her up for the evening’s long affair. Many came, a few cried, and some howled long chants of an existence riddled with regrets. The lady however, never seemed to care.
Woeful and boastful are the two types of mourners I have learnt. Once was one so utterly dismayed. Twice were two so wilfully lost. The job of a funeral attendant entails funny consequences. So much of life is learnt in death. So much of death is learnt from the eyes of the living. A future lost to years past. A past forgotten to the future. They come, they go, some cry, and some just know.
Even a lowly man could see the paradox.
Funerals are enthralling occasions for a keen set of eyes. A museum of sorts for all virtues and vices of life. For instance, the merry barrage of grievers never reminds you that dead bodies are not ghosts of a life lived. That ghosts don’t live in bodies. And, that you too are a part of this masquerade.
So, when I saw the lovely lady tonight it never dawned on me that this had not been her life. I never understood that many of whom came could have very well been a part of the very act that is applauded and gutted. And so comes another, in a long, long line of oddities.
All sorts of depictions from all sorts o
f people. Some truths. Some not. And no one knew the difference. It gets funnier, no one would ever. I suppose here lies the end to the thought. Life is a ruse. And its mightiness lies in the fact that it is a good one.