Can we talk?

Remembrance

  We all want to be remembered when we are gone. We'd prefer to live forever in a healthy state, but if we have to die, then we want to be remembered well. We want our lives to have mattered to someone.

  How we accomplish this remembrance changes according to our personalities. Some want to do establish scholarships or buildings or buisness bearing their names. Some want to be inventors or scientists discovering new diseases or new theories or processes. Some want to be immortalized in art or technology. Some seek immortality in politics, although I can't think of anyone who can possibly claim to be a statesman.

    The more realistic seek to have children or grandchildren remember them through gifts or pictures or inheritances. It's not as common now, but many want to leave each family member something made with their own two hands, like a quilt or a craft. Some of us settle for the knowledge that we'll be forgotten when we're planted in the ground and the probate is settled.

    I think it's one of the reasons writers like to write. We want to leave our words, our ideas behind. Even if our name doesn't sit on everyone's lips like Shakespeare or Poe, we want to believe that while we were living we thought something of lasting worth. How wonderful to think that our thoughts might still amuse, distract, instruct, or influence someone years after we're gone from this life! To be read, to be discussed, to be appreciated, even to be misunderstood, is to continue living.

    And so we write that our words may outlive us.