And just like that

 And just like that she was no more. I was surprised to know that she even existed in the family. A distant aunt whom nobody knew much about had passed away, and we all gathered at her funeral.

Her only link to our family was her cousin whom she spoke to seldomly. He was my uncle and the only connection my parents had with her. We all gathered at her funeral, and I stared at her corpse. The expression on her face seemed silent but yet wanted to reveal a thousand more. 

I gathered from my surroundings that she was not revered and hence her aloofness towards the family was understood. Alcoholism, yes she was an alcoholic and it was the reason for her death. It widened the eyes of my aunts, as my uncles swayed their heads in disappointment. And a divorcee too with no kin, it made them shudder at the thought of being her. The treatment of an outcast that did not follow conventional rules was ignored by society. It explained her silence towards the hypocrisy the family portrayed. The rules of familial relationship did not exist for her.

There were hardly any tears shed for her, but the tears were the sight of the dead and the presence of death in the air. They feared that they would be in that position someday. 

Her nephews congregated and took her towards the cremation ground. Those were the last sights I had of this mysterious soul. I desired to know more about her, but alas could not any more. I sat down next to my aunts as the cremation took place at the ground, my eyes wandering and my ears eavesdropping into their conversation. They gossiped about her, spitting out negativity while her body turned to ashes and her soul searching for its escape. The conversation slowly digressed about their sons and daughters in law relieving me the tension of listening to their spiteful talk about the dead. 

I sat there in silence, the sun setting at a distance turning the sky darker by every minute, and the evening heat breaking my body into sweat, I prayed for this enigmatic, sorrowful soul for one last time. And just like that life moved on once again.