The letting go by Siddhartha Mukherjee

"It had rained heavily the night before. The steep stone steps of the ghat are slick and slippery, and when my father pulls me onto the boat, the water feels more stable than the ground. The boatman rows out toward the open river, and the city of Varanasi swings into full view.

On the bank, wrestlers are performing calisthenics; a vendor is selling marigolds; a man is throwing birdseed at pigeons. The river moves sluggishly at first — but then a current forces the boat around the bend, and we are floating silently by the Manikarnika ghat, where the dead are burned.

I am 8 or 9 years old. Save a distant uncle who has died of renal failure, I have had no personal experience of death. I imagine it as little more than a corporeal exit from the world.It is an unforgettable sight: row upon row of burning bodies on wooden pyres by the river’s edge. There are dozens of pyres lighted at the ghat, like lanterns along the river.Around them, a circus of death unfolds(...)

Decades later, having trained as an oncologist in Boston, I attend the funeral service of a woman who has died after a long battle with cancer. I remember approaching the coffin, and then registering something odd: the woman has been coiffed and dressed up, and there is the faintest blush of lipstick — lipstick? — on her mouth(…)

At medical rounds a few days later, I ask some residents and interns about death: how many have carried the body of a parent? What does the weight feel like? And what about the ritual of bathing and cleansing?"(...)