Eulogy

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A family friend passed away yesterday.

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His death was no less tragic; while retrofitting some fuel lines inside the belly of a cruiser, he inhaled some noxious fumes which caused an irreversible binding to some blood vessels leading to the brain, which apparently caused him to collapse without so much an anaphylactic shock that some colleagues thought he was snoozing on the job.

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I think it took a whole hour for them to realise that his puffed-up body was actually the result of the accumulation of the toxic vapour in his lungs, and that he really wasn't prostrating at the chimney stack just for the heck for it for sixty minutes.

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At the wake yesterday night, the only thing for me to do was to diligently recite some Quranic verses - alms that hopefully will buoy him to the next peaceful plane of existence. I made a strong mental note reminding myself that death is just a transition in one's ethereal journey to Somewhere, because I noticed most of the visitors were not the least perturbed by this passing on, albeit the sanguine atmosphere.

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It is as if everyone has resigned to this penultimate fate of destiny, and no amount of tears or blood will hold back the inevitable claim - a waiting game with the grain of time as the rolling dice.

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In spite of a momentous feeling of sudden insignificance in front of The Almighty, I could not help but notice the young boy crying at the corner of the room, now fatherless and orphaned for the last 38 hours, and I too cannot hold back a tear.