A Letter to the Dead

To my neighbors,

While the rays of summer peek through the leaves onto your marble and limestone huts, know that you are basking in the same warm feeling as those six feet above. There is no difference between you and me. We pass through the same paths and are swept through the same breeze. You creep up in the dew of each morning and linger in the shadows of streetlamps at night. No matter how decomposed your body becomes, I know that a part of you still exists within this shared space.

While it is so common for the living to fear the idea of being forgotten and alone once dead, you have a permanent story on this earth. So much of being alive is spent anxiously awaiting the feeling of contentment. When will our story be enough? We work our whole lives to have a roof over our heads and a good reputation worthy of a legacy to be shared after we are gone. We are all awaiting the moment when we feel we have done enough and can finally stop moving.

Unfortunately, the vacant feeling we are left with whenever we stop this search leaves us so hollow we cannot bear it for more than a few days before it begins to turn on us. Always in search of the next thing to search for, we are consumers by nature, and it only stops when we believe we are satisfied at the highest level. Unfortunately for many of the living, the highest level is where you lie today.

You have all retired to your wood boxes and ceramic jars, a long career complete and now enjoying some much-needed rest from life’s constant commotion. There is no climax in your retirement, only withering decay of your existence in the memories of those you worked so hard to have remember you.

In a way we live to die, but there must be enough life that holds death back in order to accept it. You lived your life to its capacity, fighting death with every ounce of power you had in your body. You set out on a path to experience life for everything it had to offer. Travel, food, culture, love, wealth, children. Each life is a unique yet shared experience and in your attempt you did enough to earn a headstone and a permanent place on this earth.

So, I congratulate you on this remarkable achievement that so many of us cannot yet fully appreciate.

A death worth living for, and a life worth death.