Memento Mori, Memento Vitae
Each of is here only for a time. That time is real.
By J.C. Scharl
I moved across the country yesterday with my two toddlers; Papa is coming in the moving truck this weekend. During the chaotic packing process, I kept coming across notes, birthday cards, grocery lists scribbled on post-it notes, the whole debris of a life lived in this age of the written sign.
People have not always lived by written signs as we do. I think of how as recently as the 13th century, monks in monasteries allowed time to slip and shape itself in relation to the length of the days; even the Liturgy of the Hours, that great shaping of time by human art, flexed. Matins was not prayed at a certain numerical hour, but rather at a certain moment in the sun’s arc. Time was not a structure of signs interposed over our days. Rather, it was the very stuff of our days. The sign, cheek by jowl with the thing signified.
That isn’t how we live today, obviously. But this is not a rant about the increasing dominance of virtual signs over physical reality. There are plenty of those, of varying length and quality, and still our world turns farther and farther from itself. I don’t think we need to spend much time ranting about that; rather, it is a matter for mourning our own lost awareness. Physical reality will not pass into oblivion by us ignoring it. Physical reality—the seasons, the earth, sowing, harvest, life, death—is not fractious toddler in timeout but a great beast sleeping beneath us, breathing deep and heavy, its massive shoulders straining, at each inhale, at the frail net we drape over it. And someday, for each of us, it will wake.
The thing about the notes and cards and lists I kept finding is that many of them were in my mother’s handwriting. My mother, you see, died in March. She loved to write and send cards and letters. She preferred jotting down a list with pen and paper to typing it out on her phone. She even printed out MapQuest directions and amended them by hand, years after the advent of Google Maps. So she left a whole heap of scraps and bits and pieces marked with her signs, and each of them is now precious, irreplaceable—indispensable.
Is all the hustle, all the labor, all the scribbling and note-taking, all the efforts to shape our lives into signs that might linger—is it nothing but wind? And if that is so, why do we feel so differently?
Lots of us seem to be thinking about death right now. The best recent reflection on death I’ve seen was Sam Kriss’ essay “Nothing but wind” at The Lamp. Kriss disguises a sprawling memento mori as a review of a new translation of Gilgamesh, and I can’t get it out of my head. Nothing but wind. Is that really it? Is all the hustle, all the labor, all the scribbling and note-taking, all the efforts to shape our lives into signs that might linger—is it nothing but wind? And if that is so, why do we feel so differently? Why does every grocery list in my mother’s handwriting stab me through, transfix me briefly, and hold me still while the wind still howls?
It all comes back to Ecclesiastes, of course. “The words of the Teacher, the Son of David, in Jerusalem: Meaningless! Meaningless!” That’s how Ecclesiastes starts, with a declaration that even the words of the Teacher, even the words written here than purport to be wisdom, are meaningless. I picture Solomon sitting there in his cold and golden throne, dictating these words to some poor amanuensis and knowing even as he speaks that what he says is meaningless. I wonder if he looked at the great Seal on his finger, the ring that could bind all the demons and bury them under the earth, or if he turned it inward and clenched his fist around it so it was hidden, and could not mock him.
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
I remember the first time these things struck me as real. I don’t know that I understood them, or even that I’d heard these exact words before, but I remember lying in bed as a child and not being able to sleep (I’ve always had difficulty sleeping), and having what I thought was a vision, but a nightmarish vision (perhaps I was asleep after all; I didn’t seem to be, but it doesn’t matter). I saw the earth hurtling through blackness, but the blackness was not space; it was time, and it did not turn or curve or twist but simply went on and on, and the earth went on and on through it, for a very long time, until it suddenly vanished, the whole earth, simply gone, and the blackness went on rushing by but now it was empty and would never again be filled.
I don’t believe that vision was wholly true. But neither do I believe it was wholly false, because that is how it is for us, for every one of us. My mother was here, on earth, moving through time, and all around her the blackness rushed by all streaked with stars and happenings, and then suddenly she was gone. She is Not Here Anymore. Her mementos, her signs, are still here, in my boxes traveling across the country, in my brother’s basement, in my father’s desk, but even they will not last forever. And one day the last of them will pass away. Such is the path for all of us. I do not know how to walk it.
Somehow both things—life and death, eternity and time, building up and passing away—must be true at once.
Especially when that is only part of the path. The other part is what I do every day: play with my children, who are full of joy, for whom a new box of chalks is sufficient joy, for whom the world is still a little patch of earth warming in the sun, for whom the signs have not wandered far from what they signify. My children’s experience of reality is real too, and I cannot believe that it is wholly wrong. I cannot believe that they are receiving some watered-down falsehood that they will gradually replace with Cold Hard Reality. Somehow both things—life and death, eternity and time, building up and passing away—must be true at once. It isn’t a matter of signs and symbols. It’s not like life is a sign of death, or death is a sign of life, or time points us to eternity, or eternity is a symbol of endless time, or something built up is an indication of passing away, or the passing away recalls to mind the building up… rather, there must be both life and death, simultaneous, necessary, both total, both complete.
I can’t explain it very well. But it must be so; if it isn’t, then either life or death is insignificant, and that is clearly not the case.
Our whole world is a collection of mementos, reminders of life past, signs that in some partial way indicate life and death at the same time. My mother’s handwritten notes conjure up her life, though she is dead, and they also conjure up my death, though I am alive. They are signs, though imperfect, of the unsteady nature of the divisions we impose on reality. How far is life from death? How far is death from life?
All I can do is look to the Eucharist. In this world of signs, there is that one sign that is what it signifies. In this sign, the overlap between the sign and the thing is total; the sign does not obscure, and the thing does not confuse. What is indicated is identical with what is. The death is present, and the life is present. Both are fully indicated, neither excluded. The Eucharist is a sign of Christ, yes; it indicates His whole life, His whole death, His whole return to life. But it is not merely a sign. It is Christ. And it is a promise that both halves of reality—the living part and the dying part—are real. The pull that both have on our hearts is real. The pain of death, the thrill of life; the pain of life, the thrill of death; all this is real. Neither is an illusion. Neither is a deception. And no part of either will be lost forever.
J.C. Scharl is a poet, editor, and critic. Her poetry has been featured in New Ohio Review, Classical Outlook, Measure Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Dappled Things, Plough Quarterly, Fare Forward, and Euphony Journal (among many others). Her criticism has appeared in Plough Quarterly, Dappled Things, and others.