And So It Goes

And so it goes, daddy, that I begin to see what life is like without you. History closed when your eyes closed for the final time. I hope you weren't scared. I hope it was gentle. I can't forget that look in your eyes at the hospital--it haunts me. I know how badly you wanted to live.

I was scanning pictures today. Seventy three of them. I don't want to let time destroy them--to consume them like it consumed you. I wanted to ask you if you remembered some of the moments captured there, but I'll never know. You were there with nana, dopop, mom, friends. You looked so happy and full of life.

All of us, great and small, shares a common fate--to be devoured by the worm. Those of us left behind are the ones who suffer, because we have to live with what's left of the world as people leave it one by one. We are saddled with the task of keeping your individual imprints fresh on this earth by remembering you. It's a painful task, this remembering, but it's absolutely catastrophic when the task is neglected. When we remember, we conjure up the spirit. This spirit comes as called, wearing many hats, including that of soldier, seer, and shaman. First, Memory exacts its fee in a pound of flesh--but then it lets us live, if for only a moment, in times gone forever. And it shows us how the experience of having loved you, of having known you, will help us bear the seemingly endless stream of tomorrows. If we turn the spirit away in an effort to ward off the pain, we risk losing certain memories of you forever.

It is our job, as those left behind, to adopt the habit of both martyr and brahmin. We must embrace--even welcome--the pain inflicted by remembering. We must process that pain in a way that makes us greater, a way that enlarges us. By embracing your life within our own lives and not hiding from the pain, we become more than anything to which we could aspire by ourselves.Two, by definition, is greater than one.

I miss you daddy, but I won't forget you. And so it goes. It's been like this forever and will not change. Funny how foreknowledge is powerless to mitigate feelings of regret. Nor can it stop the onslaught of rabid loose ends, devouring the soul because they cannot be tied. It's like a recurring nightmare: you know exactly how it will proceed and how it will end, but it doesn't make a bit of difference.