I stopped for a moment after I finished reading two books today, looking for something to re-read. A memory slipped into my mind like a sliver of consciousness through the folds of my skin. With that memory a shiver burst into my spine. Inside one book was a note, written by a person I love dearly but who is now only in my memory. I read it, and my thoughts began to wander.
My grandmother, in her strange but insightful way, was a wonderful gift giver. The only things she’d ever give me were books and money, my two favorite things to get. In 2005 she gave me the illustrated, hard-cover version of "The Da Vinci Code", and with it a small note behind the cover, a paragraph at best, for me to remember the moment by:
"To Brian,
Whose imagination and talents are beautiful and wondrous. Wherever you are - we are with love.
Grandma & Grandpa, June 10, 2005"
My mind raced, and I realized the strangeness of that note, how my grandmother dated it when she never dated any other notes she had given me. For instance, a quirky Easter card from 2004 said,
"To the one Ten Eyck who won’t be celebrating Easter,
Best wishes. You’d better meditate today so we’re not the only ones on a spiritual harangue!
Grandma & Grandpa"
This is what I was used to: bitchiness, irony and a small ounce of truth. She was who I am becoming. She was a serious woman but she never seemed to have a sense of time or, as I would say, a sense of mortality. Just a year before she died something changed inside my grandmother. Somehow, she knew she wouldn’t be here forever, she knew that I would one day live without her and that our family which was held on loose strings would be cut asunder. This was my last note from her, my last prize to hold on to her love with, and she said "Wherever you are - we are with love."
It made me wonder about my age, my youth, or really, why I’ve never considered that I could die. I drive like an idiot. I get sick all the time. I’m often stressed out. What excludes me from the unlucky few who don’t make it to 22 years old?
I don’t really know and it scares me to think about it. Life could leave my body tomorrow and everyone else would get the punishment of finding meaning in my life. If I had a funeral I’d never want someone to say "He died too young," because after all, I died. It’s a permanent condition so one could only assume it was the proper time. But what purpose did I serve? How did my actions effect those around me? How will I be remembered? And if I don’t know that, perhaps I did die too young? Perhaps things are not always "meant to be", but simply are?
It’s a hard thing to think about and it comes with no easy answers. A lot of people would feel bitter to me, perhaps cold to my plight. I haven’t always been the easiest to get along with, nor the kindest. When things need getting done or when right and wrong collide, I’m the person using an iron mallet for the job of a small pair of pliers. I’ve always been a verbal bludgeon, someone who sees things very clearly and is willing to state it as such. In my experience not everyone is comfortable with clarity. For most people the happiest condition is in politeness and I’m rarely known as a polite person.
Yet, from that shade of black, there has to have been a lamp, a light, an ember from which that relief was made? I give freely, openly, all that I have. I’m walking laughter, and I rarely start a good sentence without laughter first, much less end one without it. I’m always digging into other people’s minds, trying to understand them, validate them, care for them, make sure they’re okay. I prefer the position of the guardian, the sage, over anything having to do with my own well-being. I protect, I serve, but I rarely give to myself. Is that selfless? I don’t think so, because no one’s benefited from my giving to others as much as I have, or at least that’s what I feel.
So how am I remembered when I die? Will I be covered in the shades of white or black? Does my life congeal to a puddle of gray, hard to understand, less easy to reconcile? I don’t know and it frightens me. I don’t know.
So, perhaps, that small moment of mortality that my grandmother left me with, a moment of love, was a moment for me to remember her by. She was writing the meaning of her life down on paper, forcing her will on to me with how she wanted be remembered. I love her as I always have but that note holds significance. It holds recency. It is cherishable. It holds a memory of her. It also is coincidental because it only holds the good memories.
And now, as I set out from thinking on her grave, I wonder: If awareness of her death brought out the cares in that note, would a bit of mortality be good for all of us? If I were more focused on the possibility of death, rather than the cyclical continuity of life, would that help me live in harmony with others? Wouldn’t those of us aware of our plight be focused on being a good memory, rather than a spector of the past?
I don’t know. Maybe I never will. I feel as if I haven’t done enough to help others in my life, and so I have to move on from this moment. I have to assume I’ll live another sixty years and make my goal to make my memories worth having, my notes worth reading, the love I give to others worth remembering.
And now it strikes me that perhaps this is the true lesson death brings: We’re still alive.
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