death is so near in this place

A month earlier I had seen my first freshly dead body just outside my home back in the city. Not that I’d never seen a dead body or even a young one. I’d been to funerals and served as honor guard over the bodies of fellow soldiers during my time in the Army. I had just never seen one so freshly dead- within minutes of death and without the makeup and props of a western funeral. Now I found myself in the foothills of the Himalaya staring down at the body of man who, three minutes earlier, was driving the bus ahead of mine. Only his head, shoulders and right arm emerged from beneath the bus. His face was a deep purple and blood was still flowing from his ear down the line of his jaw. His sister wailed nearby. His father, sitting on the side of the road with his face in his hands, moaned, “My son, my son.” He was the only fatality when his bus rolled after he took a turn too wide and caught the front right tire in a drainage ditch. He had either tried to jump at the last moment, or was thrown in the roll, and was crushed. This time was more difficult for me than the last. I believe both because of the nature of the death and my difficulty believing that I was experiencing death again so soon. It was the second time in as many months and two more than I experienced in my first twenty-eight years of life. The rest of the day the words, “death is so near in this place”, echoed in my head. It was a sobering reality that reminded me of the weightiness of life.