Death, as a discreet companion, is stepping on tiptoe, silently, while it walks by our side, counting the days for an inevitable face to face encounter.
Why don’t we keep it more present, don’t we reach out to it and give it space in our preparations? This constant elusiveness makes us shudder and surprise us when it strikes. Especially when it appears without warning, from one moment to the next.
This is how it has been with Luis, without us even suspecting it, with no previous illness or accident to regret. A dizziness and that was it, fulminating. Plus the hours in coma, the few moments of waiting for a definitive departure.
For him there was no pain, only the fleeting moment when he lost consciousness.
How is it that death snatches away such a vital friend, with such a luminous and powerful energy, always optimistic, always working, a doer of so many different things, full of meaning?
Is it that his extraordinary disposition towards the advancement of the new, his joyful openness to what transcends, was not enough to elude the inevitable? Or did that wonderful disposition save him from unnecessary hardships, catapulting him without further ado towards other horizons?
Death lurks around every bend and is always watching over us, accompanying our passage, regardless of what actions we take or with what attitude we face them.
Death, as a transit towards other dimensions, constitutes a wide open door through which we can venture towards the radiant pulsar of the Mind, now freed from the conditioning to which we are subjected.
All of us are struggling with our destiny. We find ourselves in the world during a time delimited between the moment of birth and the final instant of our own death, which we seek to circumvent and avoid, as we try to give meaning to our existence. Birth, death, time and space are the determinants that govern our process.
Yet we so easily forget.
Does a dear friend have to leave so that we come to terms with our fragile and provisional situation?
Luis’ departure brings us back to the center of life’s inexorable finiteness. As well as the value of friendship, so dear to him, of loyalty, affection, joy and deep love for existence.
To have had the privilege of knowing him, to have trusted him and shared unforgettable moments, to have built so many projects together, to have laughed at ourselves, establishing a funny complicity.
His warm presence remains in our hearts forever.
