avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-10-25 03:08 pm
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-10-25 03:08 pm
The so on part
There's a very beautiful and moving poem that I re-encountered the other day, which ends: "Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die."
While I understand the sentiment, I think this expresses a...well, not a problem as such, more a sort of...peculiarity in the way we think about death. I've seen it many times in the way characters in stories assure their loved ones that "as long as you carry me in your heart, I'll still be here."
Now I would be the last person to rule out the idea that we survive in some form after death. I have no reason to disbelieve that, and while I've had no direct evidence myself, I believe it's possible that other people have. I would very much like to believe that my mother and father are still in existence in some form and in some world, and I would like to hope that they are happy there.
But they are not here.
I can carry them in my heart for the rest of my life, but that's about the same as having a photograph of them. They don't talk to me, however much I may wish they would. They can't tell me things I didn't already know, the way they used to. Fictional characters talk to me (in my head, I mean), real dead people don't. Maybe they do for other people. I don't know. But either way, to say that they did not die is just not true, unless you redefine dying to mean something other than "the extinction of life in the body."
I've mentioned before those lines from The Dark Crystal that I like so much:
JEN: The Master sent me.
AUGHRA: Where is he? Is he here??
JEN: He's dead.
AUGHRA: Ah, Could be anywhere, then.
I like them, but I can't completely believe in them. Maybe our loved ones are in the wind and the rain and the sun and the trees and so on, but if they are it doesn't make the wind warmer or the rain less wet or anything. They're still lost, and if they've just gone into the next room they aren't going to be coming back any time soon.
Believing in life after death is one thing. Pretending that death hasn't happened is another. It may make some people feel better, in which case I hope to gods they aren't reading this, but it's only ever made me feel worse, because I can't feel them near me or hear their voices or touch their hands or even see them. And as my memories of them get sketchier and less complete with every year that passes (they all do, except, of course, for the eternal collection of song lyrics and stupid commercial jingles) I wonder if it's me, if this is another sense which in my case I have not got.
I don't know. It just seems peculiar to me.
While I understand the sentiment, I think this expresses a...well, not a problem as such, more a sort of...peculiarity in the way we think about death. I've seen it many times in the way characters in stories assure their loved ones that "as long as you carry me in your heart, I'll still be here."
Now I would be the last person to rule out the idea that we survive in some form after death. I have no reason to disbelieve that, and while I've had no direct evidence myself, I believe it's possible that other people have. I would very much like to believe that my mother and father are still in existence in some form and in some world, and I would like to hope that they are happy there.
But they are not here.
I can carry them in my heart for the rest of my life, but that's about the same as having a photograph of them. They don't talk to me, however much I may wish they would. They can't tell me things I didn't already know, the way they used to. Fictional characters talk to me (in my head, I mean), real dead people don't. Maybe they do for other people. I don't know. But either way, to say that they did not die is just not true, unless you redefine dying to mean something other than "the extinction of life in the body."
I've mentioned before those lines from The Dark Crystal that I like so much:
JEN: The Master sent me.
AUGHRA: Where is he? Is he here??
JEN: He's dead.
AUGHRA: Ah, Could be anywhere, then.
I like them, but I can't completely believe in them. Maybe our loved ones are in the wind and the rain and the sun and the trees and so on, but if they are it doesn't make the wind warmer or the rain less wet or anything. They're still lost, and if they've just gone into the next room they aren't going to be coming back any time soon.
Believing in life after death is one thing. Pretending that death hasn't happened is another. It may make some people feel better, in which case I hope to gods they aren't reading this, but it's only ever made me feel worse, because I can't feel them near me or hear their voices or touch their hands or even see them. And as my memories of them get sketchier and less complete with every year that passes (they all do, except, of course, for the eternal collection of song lyrics and stupid commercial jingles) I wonder if it's me, if this is another sense which in my case I have not got.
I don't know. It just seems peculiar to me.
no subject
It's not you. I can't perceive the dead either, and their memories fade for me too.
I don't mind the idea of dying someday myself, any more than, when I was four, I minded the idea of sleeping sometime. Just not yet; I know I'll miss something good if I go to bed now.
But I hate like hell that the people I love have to die.
no subject
no subject
I was just thinking "Dead is gone," when I scrolled down to your comment.
I think ideas of an afterlife, or returning to the stars or whatever are wonderful, and may be comforting, but even if that is what happens, there is an impenetrable barrier between the living and the dead. For the living, they are gone. What is left of them does fade, sadly. It's the way things work.
I miss my grandmother and my aunt, particularly. I can't see them or talk to them ever again.
However, what I can do is make the effort to act in such a way as I believe would make them proud, were they here. Wherever they are or are not, they don't give two hoots now, but I do. I think that's what we carry with us.