I’ve always wanted to be remembered by my children.
Maybe because I had so few memories of my father, who died suddenly when I was 23 and six-months married, at the beginning of my middler year in seminary.
Maybe because my memories of my mother were so darn crummy. A troubled woman she was, but that’s a story for another time.
To be remembered by my children - that’s always been important to me. Now that I’ve lived this long, it’s no longer a question - they’ll remember me, and I believe most of the memories they’ll have will be good memories … good times with travel and dinner-time silliness … and my career … I made sure that I most always had the time for their lives - soccer games, piano recitals, school events, and such. Couldn’t have happened without Donna - her steady presence, her devotion to the family, her career, too, in real estate and accounting. But those are stories, too, for another time.
What’s central here for the purposes of this little essay is my wanting to be remembered.
There are societies wherein memory of loved ones keeps them alive in some form or fashion. Is that what I want?
I don’t know.
I would like to think my wish to be remembered is more that of asset for them to carry on with their lives, as I did with mine. Mostly good, and sometimes not. But carrying on, doing the best I could, even when the best wasn’t so hot.
That’s life.
Plenty of ups and downs, and we hope for more ups than downs.
To be remembered?
For their sake?
I think so … because my own sense of “eternal life” is pretty slim - a far cry from the gospel hymns that speak of the sweet by-and-by, streets of gold, everlasting joy, with mommy and daddy and dear old friends, or something to that effect.
As it now stands in my life, there’s no one I wish to see again.
And if my last breath in this mortal vale is indeed my last everything, that’s okay by me … as it stands right now.
Though I must confess that if one of my children or granddaughter died, or Donna goes before me, I suppose I might like to see them again.
Maybe even a dog or two on that fabled rainbow bridge.
Very early on, Donna and I had some conversation about such things, and we both decided, though it very much was Donna’s sense of it here, that if there were anything after this life, it would be all right, because it’s in God’s hands … and whatever God decides will be just fine, and if there’s nothing, well then, that’s okay, too.
Would I be content with nothing in the afterlife, if there is such thing, if my life had been one of destitution and misery? Suffering and loss?
I don’t know what I would feel, because I can’t imagine a life of dead-end poverty and deprivation.
My life has been good, and though it may end roughly, as many a life does these days, with drawn-out disease-management and the medical merry go-round, I would, I hope, still know that life was good, and I’d breath my last with gratitude.
Beyond that, I’m not sure.
I know that the Jews had no sense of eternal life until they spent some time in Egypt and Babylon. For the Jew, life was enough, threescore and ten, or maybe fourscore, and that was that.
But in the end, what with Egypt on the one end, and Babylon on the other, with the destruction of the Temple, there were some adjustments made, as to justice and fairness. Could the terrible reverses of life be counterbalanced by life after death, in some sort divine rebalancing of things?
And somewhere deep into the story, hell got thrown in there, as a place where God would put all my enemies, or something like that, or maybe even put me, if I didn’t toe the line. And if hell were a little too severe, well then, we’ll go for purgatory, a mini-hell of sorts where the bad stuff is at least roasted away, whereas hell is just a matter of constant roasting, gnashing of teeth, moans and groans. Dante seems to have put it rather well.
I guess the point or so - I mean, there are some pretty shitty people around who manage to accrue lots of power, and with that power, take delight in depriving others of life. Those who live in the lap of luxury with barns upon barns full of grain, grain stored to create scarcity and manipulate the markets, and build some stinking huge big homes.
But that’s another story, too.
Somewhere along the line, a notion of resurrection - a gift from God.
Because there’s nothing in us that survives death.
No immortal soul, or anything like that.
When we’re dead, we’re in Sheol which isn’t much of a place, a land of shades, where the good, the bad, and the ugly all go.
But maybe God has something up God’s sleeve on this score … God remembers us … makes us always present (whatever that means!) … if my children remember me for the duration of their life, and if God remembers me for the duration of God’s life, which has no duration in the normal sense of the word, but is without beginning and without end … so, in some bizarre way, I’m always present in the mind of God, and so are you, dear reader, so are you.
At the end, when the time is right, graves are opened up, the sea gives up its dead, and the bones are refleshed, not with the perishable stuff given to corruption, but the imperishable stuff, like the body of Christ - light and luminous, but real enough for Thomas to dig his fingers into a scar, and real enough to cook a beach-side breakfast for the weary disciples and help them get on their way with the high and holy calling of being disciples.
Refleshment is part of the deal, because we’re as much flesh as anything else, and without it, we’re not ourselves … but that’s a story for another time.
Between now and that great gettin’ up morning, bright with sight and sound, we all die … earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, pretty well sums it up.
From the book of Revelation, the idea, perhaps, of spiritual awareness in the presence of God, aware enough to enjoy the sights and sing some hymns … but it’s an awareness full of waiting … waiting for that final moment, when the trump is sounded, and all that’s been lost is found, all that is broken is made new.
The waiting of the saints, if you will, is categorically different than our waiting, fraught as it is with uncertainty, anxiety, a not-knowing that growls around inside our soul like a hungry beast, snapping and snarling when approached.
The saints wait with a full-blown confidence, assurance, blessed assurance, for sure … no uncertainty for the saints.
Well, if that’s the case, to God be the glory.
As for me, who knows?
God knows.
And God is everlasting, eternal, world-without end, the Alpha and the Omega, which is a beginning, and an ending, not as a cessation of things, but a fulfillment, a completion, something made ready for the next round.
I think of the next round, but God-only-knows … God was doing godly things for billions of years before this earth came to be, and we got up from the mud to take a look at the sights.
And who knows what comes next in this expanding universe.
Is God done?
I don’t think God is ever done.
Endless creativity is God.
Anyway, to God I belong.
And so does my dear wife, and our family.
And everyone, all creatures great and small.
Some years ago, I read a fine article about life-after-death in The Christian Century - a theologian was asked by her young daughter, after her grampa’s death, “Will he be there in heaven?” As the mother said, I put aside my learning and said, as if it were a word from God, “Everyone you love, and everything you love, will be there.”
I think that’s just about it.
For love is the heart of the matter.
And everything, from old blankets and a pair of roller-skates, to everyone who has ever lived, because everyone was loved by someone … and so it is, and so it shall be.
What is loved is there.
In the heart of God …
And when the time is right, all shall be made new.
And that’s one heckuva deal.
