It’s not an anniversary, birthday, or other special time in life that makes me write this. I haven’t seen a movie, or television series, read a book, or heard a piece if music that particularly makes me want to write this. Memories are funny that way. You see something that makes you think of something else and suddenly your thinking ‘He would have made that crack about me being off my meds’ or ‘she would have sighed with that ‘Why me?’ phrase she always muttered’. Then the rush of memories flood in and a smile creases your face as a lump forms in your throat and the fear of spontaneous tears falling while you sit at work or shop or whatever makes you shove the memories back into their box inside of you.
He died less than a year ago, and was a friend for a quarter of a century. She died a little over two years ago, if I recall correctly, and was a friend for over two decades. She died a good thirteen years, and was a beloved cousin. He died when I was a teenager, and was my maternal grandfather. She died the summer before our senior year in high school, and while a friend, was not a close friend. She died several years ago from leukemia, and was a beloved aunt.
They are all now just memories. Once they were living people surrounded by friends and family. However they died, all are remembered fondly by those that knew and loved them. They live on within us, and while we may not think of them everyday, they had an impact on us and our lives. Our time spent with other people changes us in small, little ways that over days, weeks, months, and eventually years becomes so much a part of us, it may take someone not seen in years to point out the changes.
Everyone wants to live forever. No one truly wants to die, to have this life end. We know that we will die someday, but that day is still far into the future.
Or so we expect and hope.
Sometime after college, but before I found my first job using my degree, I made a new friend. This person, now deceased, came across as arrogant at first glance. Having had heart trouble as a baby, he was always rail thin, gaunt really. If you’d seen him in a bathing suit, you’d think he’d just come from a Nazi concentration camp in WW2. He loved antique shopping and had an ideal love that he wanted. Maybe that was a way to shield both himself and the ones he cared for most from the potential that his lifelong heart problems posed to any relationship. It didn’t matter. He affected my life and all of those he knew. Doesn’t matter if you liked him, loved him, or hated him, he had an impact on you and your life.
However, I think I digress. Memories do that. They tend to cast either a dark or rosey light on your past. In time, the bad fades and the good becomes a feeling. Or you never really feel good about that time, place or person because you can’t remember any good times or feelings. We avoid those bad feelings. We search out the good and happy.
And happy is not necessarily what I think of when I think of Scooter. Not at the end, certainly. Brain cancer is a horrible way to die, and he went relatively quickly. And that last year, before the diagnosis, we can look back and see the signs. What we, and his surviving family, can not say is that he didn’t have an impact in this world.
He didn’t have children of his own. Didn’t leave a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or what have you, behind grieving. There was no great wealth to bestow so his name could be emblazoned upon a building or university.
There are, though, hundreds, if not thousands, of people spanning his more than fifty years of life that are not the same people because of his impact on them. His imagination, his intelligence, questionable choice of cinema (can anyone not be a better person after suffering through ‘The Giant Claw’?), and willingness to express himself in creative ways no matter how crazy others might think him.
It’s memories like that and ones we don’t remember that affect and change us. It’s not exactly immortality, but it is a form of living on in others. They say that god resides in our hearts. Really, the little mannerisms, speech patterns, and attitudes of our friends and family shape who we were, who we are, and who we will become. To stay the same forever would mean closing our minds and hearts to everything and everyone around us.
And that’s not living.
So open your heart to new people. Open your mind to new ideas. Let those both dear and barely tolerated live in and because if you. And whether you agree with me or not, your reading this will change you in some way. Hopefully for the better.
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A Minotaur's Musings 