Although I know that nobody knows what death really smells like but I do. I think it’s more of a feeling of being in a place filled with death or was it a thought that people died in hospitals?

As a black girl I was taught that death is not the end, we live on after this, we are happy after death.

“It will all be okay,” they said when my grandma died.

I have always struggled to believe it’s true. I can smell it now, so powerful calling to me, making people desperate to hold on. I feel so cold like every breath is my last I hear the beeping sounds all around me, families screaming in disbelief and yes, the smell of these disinfectants.

“How about some flowers?” I think to myself.

The drip oh that damn drip. If sleep helps you heal then how do they explain that drip. I look at it and count one drop after the other dropping to the tube that feeds these drops into my body.

The doctor might as well have shouted, “Surprise!” I was surprised. I was fuming, this had not been what I expected after being told I was in remission a couple of years ago. I lay there staring at the ceiling, she put her hand on my shoulder, a hijab covering her hair, her kind eyes made me want to cry.

“We can discharge you if you wish, most patients like to be around their family at this time,”

Stage four, kind of like the games my children play shouting, “I have reached stage four mom.”
I looked outside, there was a huge peach tree with hundreds of tiny beautiful flowers.

“What about my children? Who will take care of them?”

“We don’t die, we don’t leave our loved ones behind, we just go to a place where we can keep a close eye on them. We celebrate their successes, we cheer them on and when their burdens are too much, they come visit us in our final resting place to tell us what keeps them up at night. Things they can’t tell anyone else, we listen and sympathise. They are never alone, we become their ancestors and we’re always there,” my grandmother once told me while stroking my hair when I was younger.

Tell us: What are your thoughts about death?