...and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls

No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...

any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...

Alone he lay, wondering if this was really the end. Was this where his journey took him...was this the destination. Alone, he lay sprawled on the plush persian carpet not able to really understand the immense heat that was spreading through his body and the constriction he felt in his chest. He lay isolated in a city of teeming millions surrounded by just flooding memories, impossible dreams and feeling of unquenchable thirst.

It was not more than a day when he sat with his friends and contemplated about the mysteries and vagaries of life and about the future that lay ahead, wrapped in a cloak of promise and potential.

It was not more than a couple of hours ago he was with her on the phone, connected to an inner longing that was manifesting itself through myriad emotions fleeting across a landscape of words that held more meaning by what was unsaid.

It was not more than a few moments ago when he laughed out at the overwhelming feeling of being alive to savour the endorphin rush of being there at last.

It was an instant ago he felt the exhilaration of knowing that he had redefined impossible.

It was at the same instant he knew that there wouldn't be any more promises. The ephemeral chase to reach out to the innate call was answered and there wouldn't be another chance to know anything...anymore. He didn't know what he was leaving back...but he knew that he wouldn't know it either. In that undefinable instant of time when the the light extinguished, a lifetime worth of sadness descended on him, scattering him among the minefield of memories.

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls, may be so ill,

as that he knows not it tolls for him;

and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am,

as that they who are about me...may have caused it to toll for me...

and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.

Rest in peace, my friend...for we are the lesser now.