21/10/2025
One Day, There Will Be No Such Thing as Death on This Earth
- JIBON TAPOSH TONMOY
Human life itself is a poem of mystery — woven with the secret play of existence, layer upon layer. From the moment of birth begins the lesson of light and shadow: sometimes sun, sometimes cloud. A labyrinth of laughter and tears. Who knows when the ledger of life’s transactions finally closes?
As a child, I never wanted to sleep, even when night had fallen. My mother would tuck me into bed, tell me stories of kings and queens, stroke my hair, trace her hand softly down my back. Sometimes she would rock the cradle and hum lullabies. Yet I would force my eyes open. I didn’t want to sleep. I was afraid — what if I never woke again? What if I died in my sleep?
I am still alive. I have not died yet.
But the parents who sheltered me — who filled my dreams and courage with warmth — I have lost them.
My mother left eight months ago, my father nearly two decades before that.
And I keep losing more loved ones, more kin — each woven into the fabric of my being.
With every loss, a part of me withers, a little more of me dies.
When I lost my father, I was stunned for a long time — bewildered, deaf, blind to the world. Nothing felt right. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. A piece of my very self crumbled away.
Before that, I had already lost two sisters — gone too soon, in childhood. Then my grandparents followed — my maternal and paternal elders, one after another. I had a brother who died before I was born, leaving me this earth as a gift.
My grandfather and grandmother passed in the pale dawns of my childhood. They say the earth offers peaceful sleep.
And just months ago, I lost my dearest one — the mother whose womb bore me, whose breath became mine. Losing her unhinged my mind. Life feels tasteless now, scentless, without essence. One by one, I keep losing those who formed my existence.
Every death shakes me. It bewilders me, wounds me, fills me with thought.
Whenever I hear of someone’s passing, I cannot sleep. I cannot wake.
I turn to stone — numb, motionless, engulfed in grief.
Nights pass without rest; days slip by without purpose.
Someday I too will go — just as my parents went, as my little sisters did, my grandparents, my friends, my kin.
Those I thought I could never live without — I am, somehow, living without them.
Time forces us to survive even the unbearable.
And when I too depart, leaving behind my dearest souls, I know — they too will go on.
They will laugh and cry, rejoice and grieve, gaze out at the rain from their windows, tears mingling with the downpour.
And still, life will go on.
In the ebb and flow of arrivals and departures, life continues in the rhythm of its own law.
In this endless procession of death, life often falters.
Nothing feels right. Sorrow clouds the sky; my heart feels heavy.
There is no joy in the soul, no gleam of hope in the eyes.
Death seems natural, ordinary — while survival itself feels miraculous.
Each morning when I wake, I marvel: I am still alive. Not dead yet.
When joy paints a smile upon my face, the next moment the air thickens with grief.
Somewhere a mother’s lap lies hollow in darkness; somewhere a child’s laughter fades into silence.
What kind of life is this?
And yet — amid all this darkness — I lift my gaze to the infinite sky. I dream.
One day, this long march of death will end.
A sliver of sunlight will slip through the window, and the butterflies will call forth a new dawn.
Life will burst into bloom across homes and fields.
Humanity will rise again — not in a procession of death, but in a festival of life.
Eyes will sow the seeds of radiant dreams.
This long drought of sorrow will pass.
Humanity will bury death beneath the anthem of life, breathing deep the air of freedom, tasting the elixir of liberation.
One day, there will be no such thing as death on this earth.
In the rapture of life, holding the hand of eternity, the pulse of existence will transcend mortality.
Life will live on — forever.
And yet, on that day, I will not be here.
