Reaching a dead end

BENGALURU: Last month, out of all the news emerging from across the world in these COVID-19 times, there was one that got quite a bit of press coverage. This was about a couple that died of the virus, just about 15 minutes of each other, just a few months after their 50th (or was it 60th?) wedding anniversary. Tragic as it is that this old couple got the virus despite their best efforts at quarantine, it made the news for them dying in such a short time of each other, both knowing they were both on their way to the beyond.

What is it about dying old and together that has this reputation of being the perfect magical romantic moment?
We don’t quite know if the couple really was happy together for all these years or even if they liked each other, but somehow the idea of dying together within such a short span of each other gets us all mushy and teary-eyed. They were in their eighties, one hears, and hearing their story, we imagine they had children, grandchildren and even maybe a great-grandchild or two.

We imagine they lived in the same neighbourhood all their lives and had seen the city grow and evolve around them, had their favourite coffee shops and deli, even a bookshop that they hung out at from time to time, travelled all around – all this while being perfectly in love with each other. We imagine they held hands across a fire place, cuddled right through the night and every other romantic cliche, even though they are quite likely, like all of us mortal souls, to have had their full history of warts, farts and all. 
Death cleans up life, so to say. We forgive people so much in death, even overlooking abuse. In the seemingly perfect death at a ripe old age within minutes of each other, even if it is at the hands of COVID-19, all of it is washed away into the perfect, idyllic life. 

Do we dream then of the perfect romantic death even when we dream of the perfect romantic life? Can we really dream of one without the other? What’s a good death if it didn’t follow a good life, and what’s a good life if we didn’t have a good death to follow? There’s hardly anything as tragic as being left behind after falling in love and hardly getting to live only a little while together? 

The tragedy of movies like The Fault in Our Stars or PS I Love You underlines that feeling so much. Every romantic tear-jerker plucks at our heartstrings with the grief of being left behind, whether there is another love or not. We know we grieve with them and hope with them. We wish for ourselves the perfection of the love that death does not part, no matter what vows one might take. We wish to be eighty-something and dying with the love of our lives, smiling at a well-loved life together. Love is the pain, and love is the way out of the pain. (The writer is a counsellor with Innersight)