Hemant - the candle in the wind

I heard today that Hemant was gone. A candle, in the brightest moment of its life, extinguished by an unexplained calamity that modern medicine had no answer to. Hemant was not my best friend; indeed, I knew him only to a marginal extent, for he kept to himself. He was an outdoor support instructor for my training programs at Wonder Valley and I oftened marvelled at his ability to stay silent for hours on end, as participants played games and made predictable asses of themselves in pursuit of mythical team goals. In his quiet way, Hemant was a special guy, gentle to a fault, a contrast to his boisterous colleagues and I reflected this evening on the many days I spent at Wonder Valley, under the stars, making idle banter in his company.

Why? Why did he have to go, when others who are bad and nasty live to a ripe old age, leaving unhappiness in their wake? Hemant deserved to live more than most people I know and his smile - with its inherent simplicity that is the hallmark of the Pahadi - will be with me for a long long time.
What does someone's death do to us? You fret a bit, ponder as you potter around during the day, think of the times together, lament for one now gone and then ? Life goes on. As the World becomes busier by the day, there is little time for idyllic or sorrowful reflection or indeed expression. In the olden days, much time was spent in mourning, an activity so despised that professional mourners were often employed to do the job. Today, there is instead the escape that activity provides us, the sheer force of which compels us to look at the here and now, rather than to reflect.
Is there a larger purpose that we don't know about ?