Peeling Stickers and Cementing Memories

I was just peeling the price stickers off of the new frames I got for the pictures of my grandmother and grandfather. The pictures sit on a table in my study where I see them every time I enter the room.

As I was doing this it struck me that, although they've both been dead for many years now, they have a living legacy in the lives of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and also in the lives of the descendants of some of the families who knew them. They live on in memories that are so cherished that we still keep pictures of them out to remind us of them daily. Those pictures remind us of their personalities, their stories, and ultimately of the value of their lives.

And then it struck me that I won't have that. When I die, that'll be it. With no children of my own, and nobody close enough to me that I'm aware of who would care about me enough to maintain an active memory of me, I won't continue to sit posed in a frame on anyone's desk. I won't be someone that anyone gives any thought or remembrance to, certainly not on any regular basis. My story, however significant in my own mind, will quickly be forgotten and lost. I'll just fade away like I never even existed.

Maybe at most some pieces of my work will remain for some relatively short time, and maybe once or twice someone will ask "who did this?" and maybe my name will be remembered and mentioned. And then soon, no more.

So how to live with this? And how to respond to this notion? I really don't know at this point. There have certainly been billions upon billions of people who have walked this earth at one point or another who have long since been forgotten by humanity. Very few achieve anything that warrants lasting recollection by more than a generation or two after them, if even that.

So are we really then just here for ourselves? Or are we here to love and serve without any concern for how or if that energy continues on after our deaths? Does it really matter that we make any sort of positive difference in anyone else's life if they're just going to die soon too? How do we speak then about the purpose of a life, or measure its value? Is my life any more significant than that of my dog, or some random tree in a forest somewhere?

I don't know. For now I have to be content to just sit with these questions and be grateful that I'm here in this life at all. I have to simply enjoy those few precious times when I'm able to make someone smile, or ease someone else's suffering just a little bit, and I get to enjoy the reward of feeling my connectedness to another person or to all of life.

And then I look at my grandfather's picture again. I see the mole on the side of his forehead, and I reach up and touch the identical place on my own head and feel the same mole there. And I feel the gift of a sense of love and connection that reaches across time, across life and death, and I am again grateful. I wish that experience for everyone.

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