Coming to and thinking of my friend Hugh’s standard comment on fellow alumni passing: “Remember the good times.” To which, I would add: “Remember their/our best. Remember our special, fortunate closeness and connection.”
All reactions to the death of someone we know/knew, relying on human/personal memory.
As, indeed, any recall of the past, what’s happened, what’s been done, what’s been created and connected, accomplishments and projects of note.
That’s a lot of consciousness and awareness–and what largely, makes up the inner life of any human individual.
And we turn to those memories when people die, when we are ‘down’, when we are in the presence of whatever changed physical reality, chaos, and confusion.
We automatically seem to remember better, happier times, special connections with others–all filtered through bits and fragments of memory moments.
Revivifying and reliving memories such as those experienced by Dr. Oliver Sacks’ patients in Awakenings. Those things and times that recall the olde days, the childhood and youth memories, in particular. Often, as in that case, conjured up by music. And I would add, sounds, colors, images, familiar smells (as in Stegner’s Wolf Willow), and tastes (as in comfort foods). We are sensuous animals, after all, deriving our most basic experiences first and foremost via the senses.)
And, hence, not surprisingly, the angst and dread of fading or disappearing memories in personal experience as we again, such as in those with Alzheimer’s disease. In Orwell’s 1984, after O’Brien and his technological pals have had their way with Smith’s head, he automatically stands up and raises a glass to Big Brother without flinching or with an iota of memory of how much he hated BB. Likewise, in Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy is better off mercifully dead after his lobotomy, when he has lost his mind, memory, and his essential personality and nature.
Memory–a saving grace, an oft, pleasant compensation in hard or changed times, reminding us of who and what we were and still essentially are many years later. The child, teen, or young adult we once were; the glorious, spontaneous feelings we once had; and all we once actually lived in the ever-passing here-and-now. Memory–a fundamental, and totally natural and necessary personal scrapbook and mental chronicle of our best and our favorite lived moments and shared connections.