The innocent scene of the old person shifting his thick...

The innocent scene of the old person shifting his thick reading glasses back up to the nose-bridge again and again as he went on with his hoarse recitation of the burial "talqeen" kept coming back to his mind again and again. He did not want to wipe the scenes off his mind because by doing so he would also be wiping off his bitterness which he did not want to.

All the indications were that the child has developed not depression or grief -but worse -a typical trauma, which when originating in childhood. is difficult to erase from one's mind completely even after the reality of this life becomes clear. It always keeps haunting in the adult life. It obscures the vision of the goodness of many aspects of, this world. It rebels at the thought of death being mercy.

It becomes less easy to resign to the reality of this world which is attendant with the vicissitudes of life some of which are bitter and have to be accepted as normal. The indications of a trauma vary from person to person who is afflicted according to the degrees of the stress and the circumstances which cause it. Death Is Mercy.

It is essential for the parents to realise that death can visit anyone of them suddenly and much sooner while their child may not have been prepared by them in advance about the reality of this world. He has to be made to understand and accept that this mortal life is a blessing only because it offers the soul an exit in the form of death to an eternal blissful life; hence death is mercy to be awaited and embraced.

Death as a subject should not be taboo for discussion with the children in the family. What a moving saying of the holy Prophet in which he points out that death itself is an effective preaching (for those living.) Apart from the discussion.

the most effective preparation is to arrange for the child to have his first experience of witnessing the gusal (body washing), kafan (shrouding) and dafan (burial) of a member of the community, not closely related, under agreeable circumstances while the father is with him explaining the significance of the series of rituals. Hadhrat Ali (a.s) has also said: "People are the enemy of what they do not know".

No wonder that the boy thought the world which is characterised by the death of near and dear ones is enemy because he was not let to know about death -as being an avenue of freedom for the soul from the interim and constrained mortal life to the eternal blissful life.