After about the fourth person my age began to contemplate disappearing without a trace, I realized it must be on the mind of many people. These friends express a sort of helpless feeling of having spent a lifetime recovering from their past with nowhere to channel their new-found knowledge. Some are writers who penned a boat load of stories – some published and others languishing in an attic trunk without readers and, therefore, without meaning – wonder about their purpose on earth.
Yesterday, I was graced with an epiphany when a close friend wrote me about a mutual friend’s dying father. In turn, I have two parents and two stepparents whom I adore and my step father is deteriorating rapidly from Parkinson’s disease; however, I have had my head in the sand, as though he will live forever. His death is as inconceivable as it would have been to contemplate glaciers and Arctic ice melting ten years ago. I cried for an hour. I cursed the fact that I love friends and family so deeply and thoroughly. And then, it dawned on me that if I try to protect myself by not loving, contrarily, I would be sucked into the illusion that I am alone. By falling into love’s fire, the illusion of separation burns away and even in separation we feel more connected to the people whom we love and lose – whether the separation is death or divorce or breaking up for one reason or another. What remains in the ash is the love – impervious and infinite.
So, whether anyone reads a short story that I write, whether or not a daughter or grandson will unearth my journals and garner some flicker of understanding that could even spark an epiphany is inconsequential. What matters most is that our capacity to love deepens when we pursue our passions. Every act of bravery, of artistic endeavor is ultimately an act of love that moves hearts and minds, the changes the world in ways we will never know. And, if we happen to be discovered – no matter – in 1000 years it is likely we will be forgotten nonetheless.