His time had come.

A crowd spills out of the house, lining the balconies of neighboring houses and filling the street. Inside the house, tears are shed as mourners say their final goodbyes. For the last time, friends accompany him as he leaves the home he loved. Gently, they carry his body on their shoulders. A lone conch-shell horn sounds again and again. His friends and family drape him with silk scarves as tokens of respect and honor.

Ahead of the man, his friends bear bundles of burning incense. At regular intervals, a bundle smokes beside the road, marking the way to his final destination in case his spirit takes a wrong turn and gets lost. Others have made arrangements for him, preparing all the things necessary to insure a good trip—rice, flowers, burning lamps, milk, money and other things. They have also prepared a large pyre of firewood, stacked and ready to receive his body.

It is the suddenness of death that I find so shocking here. In the States, I was used to people wasting away slowly, painfully, over months or years. So often, death can be seen on the horizon, like a rider coming ever closer. By the time death arrives, there is an expectation, a familiarity of sorts.

So imagine my astonishment when my neighbor is there one day and gone the next. “But I just saw him two days ago!” I exclaim to a friend. “I had no idea anything was wrong.” It turns out that he found out a mere two months ago that cancer had ravaged his body beyond recovery. Nothing was said. The gossip circles didn’t mention it. There was no frantic rushing to doctor after doctor hoping for treatment that would give him a little more time. It was his time to go.

And how did he approach death? By walking the streets as was his habit, greeting friends as always. Greeting me. “I’m going to help my wife close her shop. But I’m walking a little slowly these days,” he told me with his usual kind smile. I chatted with him and went on home, oblivious to the fact that his slow gait was because he was a dead man walking.

How did my other neighbor approach death? By sitting in the sun on his stool and greeting passersby. I remember how suspicious he used to be of us. Then one day, he decided we were okay, and he smiled. He had a smile like the sun had just come out. He told us he was waiting to die.

Another face comes to mind. How did he spend his last days? Still surveying the neighborhood from his rooftop, sharing water when he had extra.

Until the very end, they continued doing what they had always done until they simply couldn’t anymore. For them, the time between normal activity and death was short.

Friends and neighbors are here one day and gone the next, and I rarely see their death coming. Their faces haunt me—smiling, kind-hearted friends and neighbors now gone. Will I see them again?

Here in India, once a person passes the age of 60, it is his time to die. When our friends ask about our parents, they are often surprised to hear their ages. “Ah, it is their time to die,” they pronounce sagely. Our parents, of course, would heartily disagree, as do we! But for our friends and neighbors here in Darjeeling, death is an expected, accepted part of life. No one fights it, and no one seeks to prolong suffering. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying no one dies slowly around here. I’m simply saying there is a real contrast in how our two societies approach and deal with death. My Western culture tends to cling to any vestige of life, no matter how hollow or costly.

I’ve been musing over this contrast for some time, trying to organize my thoughts. Perhaps there is a nexus of faith and fatalism. Through the lens of fatalism, my Hindu and Buddhist neighbors seem to understand better than I the reality that we are all just grass, here one day and burned up the next. However, through the lens of faith, we have assurance that we have passed from death into life. As such, perhaps we can accept the reality of death with at least as much grace as they do.

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