How Death Heightens All Memories and Dissolves All Painful Recollections

When the despair of death eats into your soul, the only consolation left is to live in a fool's paradise of happy memories.

Time is a perfect filter. It clears the memory of emotions suffered through.

My father was aggressively cheerful and terribly charismatic. He began every conversation with passion and ended it in an obsession. Women always had conceived for him a dog-like adoration. My mother accepted it rebelliously, but it caused her pain. She looked upon it as a cross that her shoulders were strong enough to bear. And only after his accidental death ten years ago, the memory of his loving nature became a source of happiness to her instead of misery.

With my father passing away, my mother's life altered. It became calm as a river without the cascades and waterfalls, the eddies, whirlpools, and rocks, which my father had always created. She had time in abundance to reflect and remember. She had time in profusion to cry. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the suffering she lived through was gone, leaving no trace. She loved her husband now with a new love because in her memory their life together was a complete felicity.

The visions about their love oozed from my mother every time we found each other alone. We felt that intense connection and desire to make every recollection of him burn itself into our souls. She used to say with a desperate effort, "He had a knack of saying beautiful things, which caught people on the raw." With loving power, she added, "He told things to me with his voice, and he laughed at my jokes with his heart. I loved every minute of our conversations. With him, I felt such happy freedom of being myself, of talking my mind."

Time is a perfect artist. It can craft your remembrance into poetry.

Their life was a rapture, madness. They lived in ecstasy beyond description. Existence without him was rest and silence. Merciful time healed all the bruises and wrapped my mother in a bliss of the brightest sentiments. I witnessed the change and had the sequel of their life in full through her brightened tales.

One quiet evening my dear mother and I drank champagne, which gave us strange intoxication, and the conversation about my father bundled us invisibly. After the third glass, she whispered, "I shrank, I tried to make myself smaller still as I cuddled up against his body." There was so much wrathful beating pain in her voice. "I had expected so much, and that is why I secured so little of the beautiful, emotional moments we shared. Now I pick up every piece with so much care. When he was beside me, I was too often tired of love and hate, tired of my expectations. My life seemed to overflow into his life. I complained of being his shadow, of not having enough of his devotion, and of having too much of his intimate longing. I just needed to enjoy his passion, to thank heaven for the gift of making love every day."

I was devouring her with my eyes and learning a completely unknown to me, side of my mother. She tested the wine of her sensual memories and she forgot that my father was also a flatterer, and very few women could withstand the cajolery of his beautiful eyes and words. His silver speech caressed the sensitive souls, flattered the experienced personalities, and fascinated the unbroken spirits. But I had a notion she had more than a grain of truth in her words about expectations. Our energy is superabundant when we use it on nursing our assumptions, trying to read the hidden meanings in every action, predicting the worst from little coldnesses that pain us. We cut our love to the quick building invisible barriers with the promises we give ourselves and make our loving people carry out.

When my father died, my mother stopped expecting anything from him. And this change propelled the recollections of how much he had to offer when he was alive.

How death can heighten all memories and dissolve all irksome recollections.

Imagine that your memory is a form of storage with many chests, boxes, and strange cupboards full of beads, stones, and crystals. When scattered around, they could be gathered back in the trunk - well, not all of them, only the most sparkly, noticeable ones that you could find. That exact thing happens when you think about your beloved person who is forever lost. Your memory works as a beads-picking-hand, gathering unselfish crystals of loving caresses, kind words, beautiful feelings, uplifting emotions, happy tears; and missing the ugly stones of little silences, vestiges of painful words, and hateful thoughts.

Death takes a beloved person away forever. That is a big word - though it has only two syllables. When someone we love passes away, delightful remembrances strive to take all the room in our head least it would be elbowed away by painful recollections. Because, you see, our closest people, family members, lovers - they too often make us drink the cup of humiliation to the very dregs just because it is so easy to wound the one who loves, the one who cares so much.

Every relationship has its moments of utter despair. The inevitable disillusionment always happens at some point but pooh-poohs itself when death is taking charge. It requires some intelligence to love in such a way when there is no hope to be loved back. Usually, we are able to taste this kind of love only when it is too late. We cease to demand anything, and the lack of expectations gives us the blissful equilibrium that we all are craving. Death rights things as best as it can. No gruesome things are meddling about anymore. The ghastly distinctness of painful memories is lost amid the full vent of a passionate desire to commemorate the best.

I wish we could adopt the same attitude when the dear person we care about is still beside us, warm and soft, kind and loving, gentle, and often pathetic.

Only glorious should be left after death.