Death. Hope. Regret.

Death has in incontestable finality to it. When you hear the news of someone’s death, someone close in particular, even as each syllable of each word is being uttered, you are hoping against hope that the news changes its course midway. Your mind then voluntarily drifts towards hope, only to realize that its death. It leaves no room for hope. You are not even given an opportunity to pray for the person’s well-being. After that, every moment you are left wishing that someone wakes you up. That someone comes along to shake you off your dream, and that you get another shot at saying all the things that were left unsaid, doing all the things that you wanted to do with the person and everything else pertaining to the person. We are all used to procrastinating things, of thinking that we are going to have another opportunity to do the things that we wanted to do.

For long it doesn’t sink in that you are never going to speak to the person again, never going to hear his voice, see any of his expressions or even see the person. The person’s face is transfixed in your mind and that is all you see. It still doesn’t sink in because there is that lingering unreasonable foolish hope. It seems so foolish to hope but yet one can’t help but hope. You hope for things to return to normalcy, for another chance but nothing works. You have goosebumps all over your body at the very thought of what the person may have gone through while death was taking him away. What would his last thoughts have been, did he regret his decision, was he in pain, who did he last think of? And you will never have answers to these questions. Never a peek into his mind. And the only thing that remains, is regret.