Touched, Held, Carried.

On loss and memory

A poem by Sara Rian, which I discovered on Instagram on the page “lifedeathwhat”

There’s a huge moon glaring at me through the kitchen window. Everything at this moment, here, where I am, is exactly as it should be, I guess. The TV is on and people are watching a modern day family drama (which I personally think is overrated, but anyway), the room is filled with a delicious strong waft of chicken stew cooking on the stove, and the air is very cool from the rain that fell in the evening. It’s just when I turn my eyes inward, in my mind and heart, where things are painful and not in order, because I’m thinking about loss.

I once overheard this conversation when someone was expressing how unfair it is to be forgotten once you have passed away. The tone in her voice carried a sense of anger that felt like it had been held in for so long. It felt like she had lost someone and was angry at how the world continued without seeming to notice an absence of that person. In a world where a billion were still breathing, I too for a moment felt just as hopeless. She feared if she is going to die herself, the case would be the same. After a few silent tears and loud sobs, forgotten. She suggested as humans, that we are less afraid of dying than we are afraid of being forgotten after dying. Do you agree? (answer me in the poll section below) “The sun will still rise, and people will take beautiful pictures of the sunset, and you are all alone under the dirt, no one remembers.” She said with a heavy shrug of her shoulders.

I like to think to myself that once you have appeared on earth, then that’s that. There’s no going back to non-existence, even after dying. And in some bittersweet feeling it comforts me, even when I think about my own chances of dying. To know that I had appeared here on this earth and nothing can ever twist that history. This has a lot to do with the idea of people remembering you.

I like to think to myself that once you have appeared on earth, then that’s that. There’s no going back to non-existence, even after dying.

It brings me back to bell hook’s words in her book all about love, where she says “When we allow our dead to be forgotten, we fall prey to the notion that the end of embodied life corresponds to the death of the spirit…… Embracing the spirit that lives beyond the body is one way to choose life. We embrace that spirit through rituals of remembering….”

In memories then, maybe you can live a hundred lives. And you can start to entertain the idea of ways some people might remember you by. Could you continue living like a song you introduced to them? “mmmmhhh babe, mmmhhhh babe, I could hold you like this, all day…” Be thought of with each cup of single espresso because you were with them when they first tried it? Or perhaps they’ll think of you when they feel the moisture on the palms of their hands, since all they felt when holding your hand was that, a sweaty palm.

Honestly, I don’t know how long we can be remembered. I’m just choosing this belief. our whole lives and into the next, we are carried.