A Prayer for the Living

1.
Dear family, friends, acquaintances, and those who care —
Please,
Do not RIP me when I am dead, in a road accident perhaps,
If I’m not brave enough to swallow rat poison, or throttle
Myself, or find a clean-enough water body to submerge, or
Have enough cash to buy a country-made gun and a copper bullet.
Do not RIP me when I’m dead, in your Facebook status
Updates, your SMSes, your twitter handles or in your blog posts.
Don’t RIP me...

2.
Dear family, friends, acquaintances, and those who care —
Please,
I do not want to rest in peace, for
I know, now that I’m dead, I don’t need peace, or
Rest for that matter; the idea of being dead was, after all, to be
Free of all these, luxury, and that unquenched thirst for things
Which are not yours.

3.
Dear family, friends, acquaintances, and those who care —
Please,
When I am dead, “Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:” I don’t want to remain here, under this
Earth for which I struggled, to be the fodder for insects or be
Fertilizer for the listless grass and weed, no, cremate me, or feed me
To the crocodiles, or the vultures, so that I dissolve without a trace, like
Dead birds, or cats or those succulent fruits in the forest where no one goes;
Let me fade, like days, like wind, like a bad memory, like a nightmare.

4.
Dear family, friends, acquaintances, and those who care —
Please,
Do not RIP me; I don’t want to rest, or wait for a return, or
Find peace and yet remember, no. “I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale,” no,
But, I shall not miss them either; neither would I desire for rest
Or peace, but nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing.

[The lines within the quotes are from the well known and much-loved and much-quoted poem, ‘When I am Dead, My Dearest’, by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894). But, it was her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), and his mesmerising, ‘Blessed Demozel’, that conjured up the picture of heaven for me; the ultimate Christian heaven, and I knew, I’d forever live in the limbo.]