The last kiss

I am not a person who is easily impressed.
I take pride in that.
I am a critic by birth – critical about everything including every small fault in me.
This has made me a perfectionist.
My friends say it is because I am a Virgo, I think it is because I like giving people a hard time.

I don’t like listening to new music.
I have listened to the same set of songs by Aerosmith, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin and the sort since a very long time. The ‘youngest’ bands I have heard, probably, are the Goo goo dolls, 3 Doors down and Linkin Park…
Maybe this is because I get what I want from music by listening to these same songs over and over again…

A few minutes back I was listening to the song ‘Last Kiss’. It was written by Wayne Cochran and the song is more than 45 years old. There have been many versions of this song, but the one by Pearl Jam pulls a certain string deep inside somewhere, every single time I listen to it.
The lyrics are very simple, no big words, nothing metaphorical; it is plain – straight from the heart.

I have never really ‘promoted’ any movie or music in this blog so far – and I do not plan to either. Today, when I was listening to this song again for the nth time, I felt like blogging about what it means to me.

Very few people find themselves in the dreaded position of being directly/indirectly responsible for somebody’s death. Some of them might not dread it – they might have done it with intention, while the others are tormented by it.
What is worse is when that person dead is somebody you really cared for, someone you loved.
They all say the same thing:
1) It really is not your fault…
2) Maybe his/her time had come…
3) God takes away those who are dearest to Him…
4) You must move on…
5) Time will change everything…

The truth is none of them are true.
- It really is your fault – but you can’t do anything about that. Only, if you had been able to tell one last time how much you cared but you did not or you could not and it is way too late now.
- What ‘time’ are we talking about here – Why was it not ‘your time’? Why was it not ‘my time’? Why should I have been an instrument in this ‘time’ business?
- And who decides who is dearest to God?
I hate it how people make the dead sound so much like a saint when they were just like you or me. They had their faults, but those faults were not of any significance when compared to the love we had for them. They were no saints and it is not right to make them sound like someone they were not!
- It is easy to tell someone to move on. But it never happens in a second or a minute or a day or even a month. Moving on with life is so difficult; sometimes people remain scarred for life.
- Time does not change anything. You might think lesser about the dead each day but this certainly does not mean the wound does not bleed every time you think about them.

Grieving is such a difficult process sometimes one tends to wish he did not have anyone to grieve for.
Everyone knows nothing remains forever – yet we wish it does.
That is why the human race has not died out as yet – hope.

I shall become a doctor someday; I shall be responsible for a lot of lives – every single one precious to somebody.
Many a times a death signifies the end of more than one life.

P.S.: Listen to the song if you have not yet
– ‘Last Kiss’ by Pearl Jam.

Dedicated to a friend I shall forever remember,
Merlin Elizabeth Thomas (1986-2005)