A few days ago an old friend of mine came home late from work to find his wife dead on the bedroom floor. Grief and shock, acts of faith and meditations on loss came instantly and will last for the rest of his life. What occurs to me -perhaps because of my distance from the event- is the true nature of death…and resurrection.
The world’s great religions are about man’s ultimate victory over death and suffering and it leads us to question where the spirits of loved ones go. Are they gone forever? For me the path to victory over death is marked by memory…vivid memories ensure a form of immortality. Our loved ones are eternally present. Long after the carbon based architecture of our presence is gone the deep force of memory carries us through the generations. When my mother died, a friend cut through the tsunami of condolences with the comment,” you’ll talk to her more now than you ever have. ” I still talk to her today and naturally, I wonder if she ever left.
In the physical world, we have posited the law that matter can not be created or destroyed. The same is true for spirit. As long as you live in memory, you are alive. As time passes and we work through the complex and conflicted feeling that come with loss it slowly becomes clear that all our loved ones remain at our side as we laugh at a remembered joke or act upon their insights. Ironically our loss is an acquisition…the gathering of all the significances our loved ones brought to us.
Memory is the victory over death.
I once went to a business seminar and the speaker proposed an exercise in the power of memory. He asked us to follow this scenario: God has allowed you to hear the comments of the people at your graveside. What do you want them to say? The answers were telling. One man said, ” I want them to respect me for doing it on my own.” Another said, I want them to sat I was a great businessman.” After a few more answers the speaker said, I want them to say, ” I really miss that guy.”
His point -of course- is that he wanted his spirit to live on in the lives of those he loved. He wanted to be remembered.
As I go on in life and I hear the “departed” voices of the people I love it does me well to remember that they are not gone, not absent. I am always grateful that they are still talking to me.
Olio Folio 