Together Forever

HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) – A professor of English in southern
India loved his mother so much that he lived with her corpse for 20 years.
When he died, the pair were laid to rest in the same grave.

Syed Abdul Gafoor’s mother died in 1985, but he refused to bury her, authorities
said
Instead, he preserved her body with chemicals and kept it at home in a
glass case, causing his wife to leave him and sparking a social boycott
in Siddavatta village in Andhra Pradesh state.

"He kept the body intact and lived in isolation till he died Saturday " district
administrator Ashok Kumar told Reuters. Gafoor, 60, was buried along
with his mother in a single grave near the village mosque according to his last
wish, Kumar said.

We teachers of English to speakers of other languages are a strange
lot. We’ve been around the block, but often end up coming home to Mom.
We hate
to give up the things we love, and will go to great lengths to pretend
the world is the way we wish it were. We hope that when we finally pass
away, the authorities have the decency to let us rest in eternal peace
with the 37 dearly departed souls whose earthly remains we have so carefully
preserved down in the root cellar……

story from Reuters