Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
As we gathered in the foyer, Mia and Leo quickly took us all into the conference room that we were using for our group sessions. We had one in every hotel we stayed at.
Leo shut the door behind us, and it was the first time I had even looked at the others. Everyone was shaken and shocked.
“I haven’t seen a dead body before,” Dylan said shakily.
Travis was white as a ghost. He had. He had seen several. Dylan threw his arm around Travis. Jade and Lili followed Leo across the room to get some tea that the hotel had left out for us.
Kabir had come back with us too. He went with Leo and the girls. I held Savannah tightly in my arms. Her eyes were bloodshot, and tears wet her cheeks. I wiped the damp away and asked, “Are you doing better, baby?”
She nodded her head but then shook it no. “It reminded me of Poppy,” she said, her hands trembling in mine. She released a self-deprecating laugh. “I want to be a doctor for children with cancer and I can’t even face seeing a person who has passed.” She shook her head again. “Maybe I can’t do it after all.”
Mia appeared beside us. “It was your first time since your sister.” Mia looked across the room to Leo, who was walking back toward us with a tray of tea. “Let’s sit down,” Mia said. “We should discuss what we’ve seen and how it made us feel.” She then spoke to Kabir. “And it would be helpful if you could tell the group more about Varanasi and its relationship with death? It may help us all process it.”
Kabir nodded. “I would be honored.”
We sat down and Leo handed us all hot tea. I gulped it down immediately, trying to let the heat warm the iciness in my bones.
“How did seeing those processions make you feel?” Mia said and cast her eyes around the group.
“Sad,” Lili said. “Seeing their family members walking behind them. It made me really sad. It took me back to hearing about my mom and dad.”
“It made me remember that day …” Travis said. His head was bowed. “Not the good parts, the memories I had of my friends, but the bad part. Seeing them all after …”
Travis sniffed back his tears. Dylan placed his hand on his shoulder. I looked to Sav; her head was down, and her breathing was calmer but still shallow. I felt trapped in my personal hell too. The hell of seeing Cill in the car, of feeling him, unmoving, in my arms.
When no one else offered to speak, Leo said, “Knowing about death, grieving for a loved one, and even seeing them after death can be traumatic.” The truth of those words was evident in all our slumped frames. “We remember that time above anything else, have it burned into our memories. When we think of the person we loved, most people conjure that image first.” Leo sighed. “But the truth is, death is all around us. We see it every day, though we may not realize it. We wander through trees in the fall, the leaves dying as they turn red, yellow, and brown and drift to the ground. We see animals pass, we display flowers in our homes, and dispense of them when they die.
“We feel it harder and deeper when it’s a loved one, of course. But death won’t be a onetime experience for any of us. We will experience grief several times in our lifetimes. See it in nature all year round, year after year. It will never go away.”
Mia nodded to Kabir. He sat forward in his seat. “It is my understanding that in the Western world, death is something that happens behind closed doors. It is more of a private affair.” He wasn’t judging; I could tell by his tone. “Here, especially in Varanasi, we celebrate all parts of life. Even death. For us, it is just another part of our journey we take as people. We live life in the open, and that means we see death in the open too.”
Goose bumps broke out over my body. Savannah’s head had lifted, and she was hanging on every word that Kabir said.
He pointed to Mia and Leo. “The purpose of bringing you all here, this city where life meets death, is to show you that death doesn’t have to be dreaded but can be seen as a celebratory rite of passage. And it can be treasured and sacred too.
“In the space of a couple of hours, we saw pilgrims bathing joyfully in the Ganges, washing away their sins. Then we saw loved ones taking their family members to be cremated and sent to heaven. We believe dying here breaks the cycle of reincarnation and sends our loved ones’ souls straight to nirvana. To us, that is something to be celebrated, not mourned.”