With Death Mounting, Let’s Use The Backlog
Of Memories, That Is
I’ve been invited to visit an old friend next week and perhaps his family. The election will probably be hard to avoid (I mean discussion thereof; I don’t wish to presume about the merits anyone may offer for steering clear of the democratic process itself in case they know something I don’t). Despite centrist views my friend has expressed, I don’t expect much agreement if the topic comes up. Not wanting to challenge anyone’s reasons for precautions for themselves or their families, it’s a different matter when the vote to have them imposed on those with different values. But aside from not wanting to stir things up socially, I see no strategic point, for reasons that should be obvious from what I wrote October 14 that are not specific to those I know.
I was lucky enough to meet my friend and his original family (in both senses of the word) long enough ago to have some conversations with his parents, and as Yogi Berra* would probably say, how thrilled I was that my appearance at their memorial services was absolutely necessary. Besides, their children were most uplifting. Thinking sociologically about covid (and what better way is there?), I wondered what his mother would think of the shutdown (aside from the fact that she died in a nursing home during an era when that experience did not mandate isolation).
Anyone might say of their ancestors that they’d be woke to the need for widespread quarantine if they were as educated as we are by CNN. Or if their quaint recollections of transition had been amended by seeing a death certificate specifying covid as a cause (no jokes about the inflated numbers, please).
And even if their reactionary reactions could unfailingly be predicted by their past, some might chalk that up to the old guard being as luddite as ever. I didn’t know my friend’s parents nearly as well as I would have liked to, and I can’t speak that much to the family histories of my or my parents’ aunts and uncles. So no, I have little (convincing) basis for offering an opinion on what they might say. The most I can do — and I might even flip-flop on this — is think how much luckier they were to have lived in a more rational time. I used to think at least we have modern automation, but it’s becoming harder to regard that as a compensating value with mounting censorship.
Some might want to channel the info, or not be sure what they’re getting if they do, or not believe in it. At least Bill Gates knew it wasn’t enough to protect his material wealth; he offered epidemic predictions years ago. I can understand how some disdain might persist for years when dead relatives didn’t prepare their wishes accurately. So as to the title/subtitle/ostensible point of this article, I’ll leave it to others to ask whether the memories of the departed “expire” in one way or another over time.
In other words, there are too many reasons why people might not know or care what the dead think. I’m just raising the question for you, in case you want to ask before old impressions are subordinated to new ones. Or is your governor asking you to unclutter memorial services?
* I could have picked a more contemporary malapropist; let no one say I gratuitously injected politics.
