My parents have been on my mind this week. If they were both still alive (and married to each other) they would have celebrated their 53rd anniversary. I realized that I don’t still know what day it would have been, though I could certainly go dig it up somewhere. My mom has been gone for nearly half those years.
My mom has also been on my mind because I went in for my 6 month follow-up mammogram this week. Last summer they were concerned about a spot and wanted to recheck it. (Short story, it appears to to lymph nodes.) Mom’s cancer first appeared as post-menopausal breast cancer, so I’m happy to have a clean report. (As I joked to my mil afterward, with mom’s cancer – though she smoked a pack a day for YEARS – I fully expect to get breast cancer at some point. And at least this way there are lots and lots of baseline pictures to compare any new ones to.)
Over the holidays I was lucky enough to enjoy a lunch with an old blogging friend. Her family tends to pull her out to Indiana occasionally just like my family will occasionally pull my into her home state.
As our conversation ranged across multiple topics, we touched on “How do you mark the passage of life as an Atheist?” You know, not just the celebration of secular holidays, but life, marriage, and death. Particularly death. (don’t remember the exact context)
And I mentioned what we did when my mom died. (Yes, there are benefits of being a second generation Atheist when it comes to marking passages.)
So I was probably well primed to appreciate this poem PZ Myers posted and I wanted to grab it over here so I can find it again.
Dirge without music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and laurel they go: but I am not resigned.Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost.The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love -
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind:
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.by Edna St Vincent Millay
That is a beautiful poem.
I recall that death was the one thing my mom had most difficulty with when I told her I didn’t believe in god. As if, for christians, life has no meaning if it ends. Which I found quite odd.
Since then (for that discussion was many years ago), I have often pondered the idea of “life after death” or at least how our lives have meaning AND we are mortal. It seems there are things about memory, influence, etc that are important.
You say your mother has been dead for 25ish years, and yet you still think about her. She still lives, in some way, in your memory and probably in you. In all the things that are not the same as they would have been had she not lived for the years before that.
Thanks for tucking that away — I meant to save it too. Glad to hear your check up was good!