Forget Me Not

For Kay and David.


What happens to us when we die? I don't know. I don't think anyone else does either. If anyone ever tells you they do, be suspicious. On the surface it's an interesting question. What happens to us when we die? I, if you were sitting with me, could talk with you for hours about this. About what I think, about what you think, etcetera, etcetera... We'd talk and talk and talk, and maybe we'd make a few good points. But probably, we wouldn't. Because, after thinking about it for about a minute, I don't think it's an interesting question at all. We don't know the answer. We don't know how to find the answer. So, at the end of the day, what does it really matter? 

Maybe it doesn't matter at all. 

Since it might not matter at all, I think the best thing is just to continue making things up in the same manner we've been doing for all of recorded history. So, in that spirit, here goes.

Regardless of what happens when we die, don't be a dick while you're alive. Try and make the most out of every day. Love your neighbors. Love yourself. Notice the world around you, and try and make it a better place. Find the things that you don't like, and don't do those. Find the things you do like, and do them. Find the people you love, and love them. (You'll have to do some things you don't like possibly, for the people you love. We'll say that's okay.) Regardless of what happens to you when you die, do these things while you're still alive. These are the things that we, you, me, everyone else, can control. Everyday I wake up I can decide how to impact the corner of the world that I inhabit. Some days I give things to the world, other days I take from it. Some days I positively impact my corner, and other days I negatively impact it. We each do this every day we are alive. 

Let us now consider the question from the point of view of those of us left standing here on earth. What happens to us when we die? Those that we loved, and those who loved us, come together. There's legal shit that has to go down. Someone gets paid a large sum of money to build you a casket. People who knew you gather in a building and sing songs, and cry, and console one another, and tell stories, and laugh, and remember what you were like when you were alive. They each have a different perspective on your life; now, postmortem, the only perspectives that remain. You become a memory. A collection of memories, in the minds of the people that knew you. The way you spoke, the things you did, the times you laughed, the things that made you smile. 

These memories live on for a time. Those people wake up the next day, and continue their lives, and smile or laugh or cry every time one of those memories comes to the front of their mind. The memories get together, and they might cause people to take more lasting action. An event, or a memorial, in your name. To be a yearly reminder of when you were here. A constant joy in remembrance of your life, and a constant reminder of the pain of your absence. This reminder helps carry the memory along. The same stories are told. But, eventually, the people who knew you pass on themselves. The stories are still told, but now they are retold by those who never really knew you. Little details may change. Little details may be left out, or added. You still live on in memories, but they become a little less you. This, is sad. 

Over the years, with the little details changing, being added, or omitted, you change a little more. And a little more after that. Until, eventually, you wouldn't recognize yourself. Your name might still be on the banner of the event, or on the plaque by the memorial, but the memories have irreversibly morphed. It's not the real you. You've transformed again, from a memory to an idea. The idea of you lives on. This is what exists in the minds of your descendants and of the descendants of your loved ones. The idea is not immortal, but it is nearly so. Ideas change too. They may be documented in different media, but those media will not last forever. After enough time has passed everything you knew will be different. The sun will die, the earth with it, and everything we know will be gone. 

I'm writing this because recently, death has made itself known to me. The first people that I really knew in life are now dead. I don't know what to make of it. It's the same world, just they are not in it any longer. I see the same view out my window each morning, but they're not in it any longer. I've been thinking, what is it like for them? What are they experiencing? But each time I do, I know that I could not understand it. All I have ever known is life. I only know these dimensions; I might not comprehend another. It would be like explaining the concept of flight to an ant, or the internet to Beethoven, or complex calculus to a giant squid. Actually, the squid might understand calculus... 

All I can do, all I can comprehend, is what life is like without the ones we love, and how they live on in our memories. Lest we not forget the loved ones we have lost, for there is where the afterlife exists on earth. Heaven on earth is often used to describe beautiful places. But the truth is, it is anywhere you are when you remember those who have died. In those memories, they live. 


Author's Note: This post was originally written in the pre-COVID 19 days, where the societal rituals surrounding what to do with loved ones that passed on still involved social gatherings. Now, obviously, we can not do these things. How this affects the grieving process I do not yet know. I don't surmise it will make it any easier.