Passing On
Sunday. Yesterday. August 4 was the fourth anniversary of my wife’s death. It passed without much notice. Only a close friend and a cousin offered condolences. And I think that’s as it should be. The people closest to you remember. For everyone else, the world goes on, and within their lives, and the lives of those closest to them, people are dying or preparing to die, so it’s all relative as to whom you remember.
As for me, I was thinking the other day, as I talked to a friend, that the memory of my wife’s passing has started to take on the patina of age. A sorrowful thing that happened, in a litany of sorrowful things, things endemic to someone my age. Lost parents, a brother, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends. A list everyone shares in one form or another, a list that is ongoing and growing as we age and survive.
And to some extent, I’ve developed a bit of survivor’s guilt. Why me? I can think of a thousand reason’s why anyone I know and loved and died deserved to live longer than I have. But here we are. Or at least, here I am, continuing to continue on. A mystery of life. I guess it’s best just to lift my head up, buckle up, and get on with it, which I’m doing, more or less, keeping alive the memory of those I’ve known and loved and living for those who are still alive.