Even the greatest of memorials fade in significance. For the ordinary folk such as myself, memorials turn to dust. We make memorials of all sorts in our desire to preserve a memory, to have our loved ones remembered, not just by ourselves but more especially perhaps by others. In the end, however, once those who had known the departed becomes themselves departed, the memorials turn to dust. Last month, as million trooped to the nation’s cemeteries for the All-Saints Day holidays, I visited the grave of my old boss, my former editor-in-chief. Amid the throngs of people at the cemetery, the mausoleum where his remains lie was quiet, nestled in a peaceful place with other similarly quiet mausoleums. There were a few flowers, but there was no one there. The mausoleum itself was beautiful and appropriately serene, but there was no one there. Many of his generation are long gone. His works and writings live on, but soon enough they will be just words to a name. Years from now, there will be no one to remember the kind of person that he was.
My father’s ashes lie in an urn placed upon an altar in my mother’s bedroom. My father was both a doctor and a lawyer, and he achieved much while he was alive. He was well-liked and well-respected, a giant among Filipino pathologists. He has no grave to speak of, no memorial which people outside the family can visit—just his ashes in an urn, on an altar in my mother’s bedroom. It’s a quiet and private memorial, but a memorial just the same, with photographs around to remind us of him. His name will surely live on, but when we who had known him and loved him are gone, his ashes will become truly dust. Our memorials to him will fade.
My own beloved babies, enshrined in memory in this blog, were buried in the ground. No casket for them, so they literally returned to the earth whence they came. I make all the memorials to them, for them, but none of those memorials can ever capture the everyday joy I felt when they were alive, the comfort they gave me during the dark times, the love they offered unconditionally, the very beauty they possessed. I can perhaps save part of the ground they’re buried in should, for some reason or another, at some time or another, that ground may become inaccessible to me. But when my gone, even that hallowed dirt will become simply dirt.
Ashes to ashes. Dust thou art, to dust thou shall return.
“He’s not really dead, you know. Not as long as we remember him.”
Insightful words from Dr. McCoy to Capt. Kirk in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” after they had given Spock a burial in space.
Indeed, as long as we remember them.
But for our departed to live on in memory, we who had loved them would have to live forever. To remember them, yes, to tell others about them, to keep their images from fading, to preserve their memory in family lore. But we, too, shall become ashes. We, too, shall become dust. And when we do, their memorials will lose all significance.
Our memorials matter only while we live. Strange, but we make these memorials precisely because we want others to remember our departed loved ones even when we’re gone. For ourselves, we need no memorials. After all, we hold them in our hearts. While we live, they remain in our hearts, alive and well somehow, with us still. They come to us in our thoughts, in the grief that never really goes away, in the tears we shed in the quiet of night. We need no memorials in stone or marble. We are their memorials. But we inevitably become dust. The real memorials become dust.
It may be disheartening to think that our loved ones will finally be truly dead, finally unremembered, when we who had loved them, who remember them, are dead as well. But even in such a disheartening thought, we may find some consolation. After all, who wants to live forever remembering a loved one, when one can join that loved one in whatever existence follows this life?
Give me a reunion in ashes anytime and let my memorials fade.
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Is it even possible to forget?
