What we leave behind

November 26, 2012

     Thanksgiving has brought out some of my darker ghosts.  I have a very long love/hate relation with the Holiday Season.  I wont go into that right now though.  I've had a lot of time to think about the legacies we all leave behind.  All of us want to be remembered with love and kindness for as many years as we possibly can.  This is why we as a species aspire to greatness and/or infamy.  This is why human beings have children and strive to live long and financially productive lives.   This is why genealogists strive to stitch together the past.

     History, however, is all about the long run.  Human life isn't yet a second on the watch face of time and yet with great hubris we believe we will somehow become the defining event of this space/time scale.  Wow!  Give us a few more hundred years and we will manage to wipe our own small blemish, nothing remaining but tombstones, dead cities and lots of places where nothing grows. 

     What will the headstones of that future say?  Died trying to create cold fusion?  Cured Cancer only to be killed by Diabetes.  Here lies Bill Gates Bazillionaire? 

     I think I like some of the old monuments better.  The Taj Mahal, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.  It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in Memory of his Third Wife Mumtaz Muhal who died in child birth.   He apparently loved her very much.  The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, may it one day become and remain vacant. Others that I would like to see to pay my respects are the Silent Chairs in Oklahoma City and Ground Zero in New York, I would also like to see Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the Sites where so many people lost there lives to so called  ethnic cleansing.  Isn't it time we learned that we all bleed the same blood and have the same hopes and dreams no matter what our religious beliefs may be.

     All I leave behind is this: these words written on an ever changing communication medium that I am fairly sure no one will ever read.  My books, clothes, possessions, my hopes and thoughts on life and death and what really matters, and unfortunately a body to be dealt with.  My chosen disposal method: Cremation, hold the embalming, no viewing, no funeral service, no memorial service (except for family if they want to hold one; make it a party) Bury my ashes with my Soul Mate John.

Cold Dry Days

November 18, 2012

Where did the first two weeks of November go?  It seems like yesterday that I was wondering why we didn't have any Trick or Treaters.  I remember as a kid we would go treating for blocks! There wasn't a neighborhood or a house we couldn't go to, except of course, the haunted one!  Then there was the family that was so into Halloween that they would dress up and scare the stuffing out of you when they answered the door! (HaHa!)  Those were good times.  There were rumors of bad things that happened but it never happened in your town.  Now you take your kids to a parking lot where either a church or some community group puts on a Trick or Trunk event and your kid can't be dressed up as anything remotely weird or bloody. Hey we tried "Accident Victim" and "Funeral Director" and they told me to take the kids home. What a crock!  And, worse yet, the kids are a Chinese Pug, and a French Bulldog!  Anyway, I should have kept them inside they just barked and ran around causing pandemonium. 

Now it's almost time for Thanksgiving and I have been running through Static Guard like it's going out of style.  I've been a little afraid to use the computer for fear I'll zap it to death.  The temperature has finally settled down to where it should be this time of year, but the wind has dried everything to an extreme. 

Sallekhana

I was watching a program on the National Geographic Channel today. It was about Taboo burial and death customs. The first segment was about the Jainists of India. They are vegetarians who don't eat root vegetables and only eat during daylight hours. At the point in their lives where they feel that they have acheived all that thay can toward enlightenment; they begin to practice the rite called Sallekhana which is slow fasting unto death. It may be several years before they enter the last phase. However, they have no illusions about it. In India, this practice is protected by their Constitution. It is a Religious Right.