The Fragility of Life: In Memoriam

Writer's Note: This is not a story or an exposition or grand revelation, merely an attempt to capture a piece of a fleeting feeling in written text.

"Ah, but we die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."
- Cocktail Party

The above quote is one of my favorite quotes describing the transiency of friendships, character, and life, but it ends with the assumption that though our friends may change, we will meet them again. Today I contemplated the ideas between the lines, of what happens if we never see a person again because death's hand reached forth and drew them into the grave. If as this quote says, that person has already died to you with their physical absence, then those last memories are what linger.

How strange and alien to think that a person lives on within the memories of those people who knew them, everyone carrying a different part and understanding of that person, both friends and enemies. Every person tells a tale of rival, lover, sister, brother… friend when all other hope has left. Never will one of those pictures fully tell that story or bring that person to life as a complete entity, but still they live on as ghosts, floating and flickering around in heads and memories spread across the country and the world, mere whispers. But sometimes those whispers are so strong you almost feel as if they never died, could not have died, and might walk through the doors again. Suddenly regret, loss, guilt, vanish beneath an illogical anticipation of foundless hope that nevertheless persists.

But that feeling fades as the stronger, more recent memory of their death encroaches back upon your waking mind, and the ghost retreats again to the shadows. With the passing returns the pain of loss and separation that had briefly dimmed in the light of the past, to once again cling at the edges of your mind and heart. With time, even that pain will fade, but whenever memory blooms and that ghost returns, so shall the hurt return like an unwanted guest, staying until you can will the numbness to cast it away back to the shadows from whence it came.