This is haunting me.
There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second in when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, some time in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.*
From Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman.
My name will fade rapidly; a century from now, my descendants will read it in genealogies, and that will be all. It may survive in a dusty history here and there, of universities I was employed by, or studied at, or perhaps some student will consult my thesis. But I think that is unlikely.
I’m not sure that this bothers me. My own name – I don’t care so much. We live, we die, the atoms that make up our bodies go back to the star dust from which they came, billions of years ago. But it hurts me that one day, the names of those I love will disappear.
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*I have shamelessly stolen this from Still Life with Cat, which is written by Pavlov’s Cat, and if you are at all interested in the written word, you should be reading her blog. Giovanni, Che, Harvest Bird and Art and my Life, I’m looking at you! Dr Cat used to write at Pavlov’s Cat, but last year she decided she was due for a change, and moved over to Still Life with Cat. For another taste of the glory of her writing, try this post On Editing and this one on Great Opening Sentences, which is at her old place.
That paragraph got me as well – but I didn’t think it through as well as you have. But I think some dim thought like that is why so many people want to be famous – to make a longer lasting impression on the world.
*Blushes*
No ‘stealing’ about it – as many people as possible should read the book. Apart from anything else there is something incredibly consoling and calming about it.
Thanks for the heads up
Indeed, I only knew her from her comments here but the blog looks great. (‘to evade classification or taxonomy while pondering the world’ – heh!)
I have slightly morbid thoughts of that nature regarding the kids sometimes – I know they’ll outlast me, but in the much grander order of things, not by that much. They might have kids of their own, who shall remember them, but how many generations does that meaningfully last? Those thoughts also intersect with the fact that I know next to nothing about my paternal grandfather, who must have been a very interesting person, but he died half a century ago and my father never spoke about him.
Write to your descendants. Do it now. It doesn’t have to be great literature – just tell them who you are and how it was for you.
One of my treasured possessions is a copy of a letter from my great great grandmother, describing in detail the 1856 voyage out to New Zealand and what she found when she got here.
She is so expressive that that her descendants can feel her real presence – a lively, interested, practical, and appreciative woman (who could spell) – and even perhaps recognise themselves in her.
Her letter was sent back to relatives in the UK to encourage them to emigrate, and survived by accident. Yours, written with posterity in mind, might fare even better.
This seems pertinent.