I've just come from a funeral of a co-worker. He is the third from my work we've lost suddenly in the past year. It is also the anniversary of the death of my brothers childhood friends. I'm remembering my Mom and one very dear friend. I'm remembering aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, parents of friends. I'm struggling with how I'm feeling. I'm sad, I'm pensive, I'm angry, I'm happy that I'm alive, I'm reflective, I'm scared, I'm hopeful. All these emotions are fighting within me, coming in waves, one replacing the other without even realizing what I feel. I'm alone in my house right now and I want so badly for someone to be here, to hold me and comfort me, and to help me laugh at myself.
Three things about life and death:
-I've been playing in the family history field a lot the past few weeks and today suddenly all the names on graphs and paper and in databases are people to me and not just statistics. Each of us leave people behind and leave a legacy that means something to someone somewhere. And here I am, trying to put meaning to their lives, on paper, with most of them people I never knew. They've touched my life years later and in some cases decades and centuries later. The choices they made have touched my life and with some, the choices they made affected my life. A continual stream, running forever.
-I don't know what I believe, really, about what happens after death. Maybe nothing. Maybe the picture painted of life ever after in a heaven with streets paved of gold and a wise and living being overseeing and loving all. Maybe our life force stays forever in different forms, reincarnated as plants, animals, new humans. Maybe our life force or soul has to continue learning lessons, as we do now in our alive life, and someday reaches a plateau of fulfillment, having learned all the lessons to then become a teacher to other life forces. I know what I WANT to believe, but I'm scared to fully believe. What if I'm wrong?
-I'm not scared to die. My meet-and-greet with cancer and facing my own mortality took away the fear of dying, no matter what happens to my life force/soul after I suck in my last breath. I only know I don't want to die and I want to live a life full of love and people and laughter and song and time spent doing the things I love. I continue to struggle to get it all in.
Rest in peace all who have passed before me, those I knew and those who are names on the reams of paper in binders filling the nooks and crannies of my house. Your lives have touched and changed mine. Your legacies live on in memory and in the nooks and crannies of my mind. I will continue to remember you. For those I knew, I will strive to emulate the best qualities each of have shown. For those I could not know, I will continue with my feeble attempts to document your full lives in short stories. Life and death: how mysterious, how wonderful, how agonizing and joyful.
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I have been thinking about something similar, how pictures can tell the story of our lives, to those who never know us while we are alive. It makes me want to change how I take pictures, taking them not for me, but for future generations. Interesting to think about all this.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting and inspiring and kind of sad in a way, too. Part of why I started scrapbooking was to try to capture that aspect. I mostly now at least think about that before I take a picture.
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