The Need To Die Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

Everyone wants to live more,
no one ever wants to die and go;
but as one gets older and weary
the need to die is so necessary,
the need to sleep eternally is so mandatory
yet everyone concentrates on living more
that in the action of self-preservation
one takes medication and treatment,
another resorts to surgery and therapy
while some seek meditation and relaxation
so that they can survive for some more years
and live for some more time on this wonderful earth.

But they fail to realize that
the essence, the flavor, the ambiance of life
gets cast away by old age and grief;
that is when death is better friend to choose
to drift away from the lagoon of memories
as all the hemispheres of reminiscences
keep resounding and colliding recollections
on the riverbank of nostalgia creating ridges
and breaking apart the rock of tranquility
thus receding calmness and composure
as regrets and tears, remorse and repentance
keeps polishing an developing desolation
making life so disagreeable to realities.

And the actions and activities,
the love and affection of those
departed brothers and sisters
who played and grew up together;
and those departed uncles and aunts
who extended their love and support to
the past and future events of our rearing;
where those loveable grandparents cared
and shared their energies in the fragments
of our upbringing until they died;
all these relatives in a constellation
traverse directly everyday, every time
in our eyes of imaginations and mind
thus ushering an agony so unforgettable
that the intent in us to live more years
just dissipates and dis-integrates
as serenity keeps rolling away
from the mind thus imposing the words-
- 'had I to die before them all,
I would not have to bear these heartaches'.

And while bereavement cascades unstoppably
like a silent waterfall coming from atop a mountain,
sorrow keeps soaking individuality with regrets
that in the act of remembering those
whom we loved and who have died and gone away,
it evokes such a sense of unique loneliness
that nothing remains more
than the urge to be with them
in the same tempo of their love and affection;
and that is when the need to die precedes
all other intentions and imaginations
as old age entwined by grief provokes
and promotes a sequel to depart
compelling the living mind and body
to yearn for eternity.