[aka.alias] 9/12/2011 02:25:00 PM

[aka.alias]

Recently, an 80-year-old woman of my acquaintance passed away. Several years ago now, my father did too, at about the same age as this woman. Both of them left behind family members who handled the passing in somewhat similar fashion, with a seeming need to try and ensure that person would be guaranteed a place in the memory of the living. What these relatives failed to understand is that this is not something that can be done by anyone other than each one of us, on our own, while we still draw breath.
One of my sisters, the executor of my father's will, purchased a granite gravestone and had it engraved in the usual fashion, with dates and a pithy little saying. I had no problem at all with the purchase, but the reason given for it seemed to me to miss the mark entirely. "Without the stone," said she, "it's as though he never lived."
Likewise, upon the more recent death, a surviving son said he felt the need to write something about his mother and post it in an online weekly. No problem except that the reason given was that he "didn't want (his mother's) life to be in vain". There again, a total miss of the mark.
For both of the deceased, in this case, they had lived a span of many years, in situations of peace and relative ease. Neither had ever faced starvation or lost family to any horrendous circumstance. Both had had more than enough opportunity during the span of their years to create their own memorials, to ensure for themselves that they would live on in the hearts of others. (Victims of calamity beyond their control, have had years of opportunity stolen from them,and for these people, like the victims of 9/11, every memorial constructed is more than fitting.)
When Charles Dickens wrote his story "A Christmas Carol" he gave the ghost of Jacob Marley words to say that express exactly that point which I seek to make, "It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men..." Through Marley, Dickens exhorts his readers to "make mankind (their) business" When someone does this while they are alive, they create their own memorial, one with much greater meaning than a slab of stone that sits perched above their remains, or words posted somewhere online. Granite may last untold years, and readers in their thousands may peruse the online piece, but neither one means anything more than a curiosity, if the deceased never made mankind their business. If they never set out to make the world a better place for someone less fortunate than themselves, what is there about them that anyone should remember? If they never did their best to put others ahead of themselves, what is there about them that is worth remembering?
That slab of granite will last far longer than will anyone who knew my father. When the last one of them dies, the granite will then be truly nothing more than a random slab of stone. Perhaps some day in the distant future, a class of school children might walk among the stones where it stands, and use paper and pencil to make rubbings, but they will have no idea of the man whose marker they stand beside. Neither will the words online bring any reality to the name they appear with.
The only hope for these two, or any other of our species once they are deceased, is to be held in the hearts of those for whom they made a difference; those for whom the world was, indeed, a better place because of their determination to make mankind their business. If there are such people left behind, they will hold the memory of the deceased close and help it to live on in the stories they pass along to their family and friends. If the deceased never built bridges from themselves to any others, then the last breath they drew will be truly their total and absolute end.

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Posted By aka.alias to aka.alias at 9/12/2011 02:25:00 PM