As I wake up today, I am dead. My body is stiff and I am no longer breathing, while my soul is looking at it and trying to make it get up. My skin is pale. It must have been a while since I stopped breathing. My wife and mother of my two kids is sleeping beside my cold and immobile body. She is unaware of my state. How long will it be before she discover?
The alarm goes off and she opens her eyes slowly. As usual, she is turning over to my side and embracing me. At the touch of my cold skin she recoils, a small shriek escapes her lip. I can see fear in her eyes and thoughts of a shaky future whizzing through her mind.
Her hand's inching forward again, propelled by a dying hope. She nudges me, shakes me harder and then the first tear rolls down her rosy cheeks. Her cries are agitating our baby who is sleeping so innocently in peace which may continue for some years till questions about me rise in his mind.
Woken up by her mother's cries, my little daughter is at our bedroom door, trying to rub sleep out of her eyes, her hand clutching on the curtain. She is walking closer and sees her mother crying and then looks at me. She comes near and gives me a kiss on the cheek, which would usually make me wake up and pull her in a bear hug. When it doesn't happen, she does it again. I try to lift my hands, but not a finger moves. I want to hug her like always and listen to her giggles, when I hug her but I no more hear her giggle. I can just hear her silent sobs.
By noon there are a whole lot of people. I can feel the moisture of tears in the air. I now lie on a table in a tent outside my house. Covered in white cloth, on a thin carpet. A wall of yellow cloth is built around me. People come into the tent, solemn, some holding back tears, some bland, some crying out their eyes. My wife is sitting outside the 'yellow wall'. My son is on her lap and my daughter is sitting next too her. I wish to see them only, I want my wife not to cry but she won't stop.
My son is crying now, he is probably startled by all these people. I can hear someone walking around, with him cradled in her arms, trying to calm him down. That is not going to work; he can sleep only when we are silent and still. I found this out when he was two months old when my wife and I had so many sleepless nights.
It's already been a week now. I can see all the family members present. Numbers of gelongs and gomchen comes to my house daily and pray so many prayers infront of me and in my house. I pray that they pray for a trail free after-life. I know that I will have to leave physically too. To a new home and I am too scared to even think of what's waiting for me there.
I am naked now. Some people are washing my body. My shame doesn't bother them as I am now just another dead body for them. They dress me up handsomely and adorn me and take me to a place where there is a stack of woods. They place me on the ground on a carpet again. Face covered with a yellow scarf.
Soon men in my family enters the scene and says it's time. My girl stands there, silently looking on. My wife comes near me, lifts the scarf covering my face and takes a last look at it. Drops of her tears wet my cheeks as she stares into my face. Then her mother holds her back as they lift me. They shift me from the carpet onto the stack of woods.
I am on a stack of woods now. There's the smell of freshly cut trees in the air. They start stacking more woods upon me, slowly, as if they know that I can feel it. One if them nudges me with a long stick and positions me. I can no longer see my family properly.
I can hear someone say, light it. The smell of fire. Its's becoming hotter. My body catches fire and a man keeps poking me with a stick and it's hurting me. You may think I am dead, but it hurts. As the fire slowly eats away my body, I can hear my wife crying out loud. She needs to be strong, for our kids. It is no longer in my power to protect them now. I can just watch over them. Now I can hear footsteps walking away, leaving me here. My body no longer exists. I am just a soul and ash.
My ashes have been left here for three days now. A few men collects them onto some bags on the third day. They carry it on their backs and places them in a vehicle . Crying, my wife waves a white scarf. The vehicle is moving. This is the last my family will see anything of me. They sprinkle my ashes into the river. I am leaving. Alone!
