[MMM#3]: Memorial

When we lose something or someone, or when we leave a place, we mark it. So we don’t forget. “On this date…” “Here lies…” “Kilroy was here…”

But we carry it with us, too, don’t we? Our dead parents and grandparents. Lost innocence, lost faith. Friendships left to wither. Homes outgrown, sold or simply abandoned. Chance after chance to choose better. These hauntings are not horror. They are our guides. They help us along to where we are meant to go.

And yet, once, in a book (now out-of-print; RIP), I wrote the words wisdom is what the world cuts off of you. I wrote it because it sounded good. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sounded good and it sounded true. Turns out, it is. What’s gone is gone. It doesn’t come back.

Which is it, then, I wonder. Do we want to forget or don’t we? Is loss, in fact, an accrual? Or are we really supposed to unburden ourselves, detach from everything and everyone, even (especially) ourselves? What do I choose to believe?

Lincoln believed in God but not heaven. He believed human memory was the only afterlife of the dead. Lincoln was wise. He lost a lot. He was rarely unburdened. He wanted to be remembered, and he worried greatly, in his younger years, that he wouldn’t be. His ambition was sourced there. It cost him everything. And yet — going where we’re meant to go costs everything, eventually.

Look on every exit is being an entrance somewhere else, writes Tom Stoppard, in a play about plays. And disappearing (dying).

I’m prone to disappearing. Irish goodbyes.

I’m not sure I want to be remembered. I do, however, want to go where I’m meant to go, be who I’m meant to be. I’m not there yet. I’m not him yet. What will I do when I find him — maybe that’s the only real question.

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[Micro = short. / Meta = writing conscious of itself as writing. / Micro-Meta Monday = musings, on writing / art / consciousness, appearing here on the last Monday of each month.]