Today would have been my dad’s eightieth birthday. Happy birthday, Dad.
I wonder if I ever did wish him happy birthday, face to face. Perhaps not, he went to join the ancestors a few weeks before my sixth birthday and I have only shadow memories of him. It’s been a constant yet too easily ignored shame for me that I’ve not visited his grave, even though it’s quite close (assuming it hasn’t been removed to the local ossuary). Time to fix that.
Time remains fluid but unidirectional, without the fun of the timey-wimey, and I don’t think I’d care to be other than what and who I am. But in a strange otherworldly dream it would be disturbingly exciting to see my alternate self, in a life where he didn’t journey beyond so young. But who would part the yarn spun by the wyrd sisters, and in a breath eliminate all that is, for something that could have been? Not I.
I’m not sure how important graves are – not at all sure that many of the dead hang around where their remnants were deposited. For what it’s worth, I have no sense of my Gran at her grave, but she’s there in her art, and where her images are, so is she. Moments of remembering, like this one you’ve shared with the rest of us, may do a lot more to honour an absent one than going to a place where they left the carbon they had finished with.
LikeLike
My understanding of the ‘verse doesn’t contain references to preserved post-demise personality. It’s not that. It’s a need to fully grok the thing, and it’s also a matter of respect. Waiting has been for many years, but perhaps now…
LikeLike
Indeed now. I visited the cemetery and located my dad’s grave today.
LikeLike