Memento Mori

This is my memento mori: that I will be forever haunted by it.

      Death is not a friendly face. We hate it, spit at it; we wish to declare ourselves immortal. This I seem to see most in the college atmosphere amongst the students. There is no second glance over their shoulders, or beyond the sidewalk they step on. Their life is decided; they know what they want.

      However, when I go home, he  returns. Grinning at me, he says he was there the whole time. I see the decay that time has passed onto the familiar faces in my life. It’s fascinating, yet terrifying. Suddenly, I’m aware of my surroundings; I can actually see everything. I realize that I’m battling my memento mori; but not only my own, but the people I love. I want to fight their fate for them; but inside, I know I cannot.

       Now the ironic part about memento mori and immortality is that I can only feel immortal by knowing memento mori. Silly, I know; but it’s logical. If we ignore death, we cannot fully live. By pretending we do not have a memento mori to come, we are just living without experiencing anything. Yes, you are more than welcome to say “Wait a minute! We do have experiences and we are living.” Yes, but how often do you just walk to class, eat, sleep, and work without really thinking about it? It becomes so basic, so normal that we do not notice anything else around us. We are therefore very close to resembling zombies (not in looks, of course).

      Maybe this is the connection between life and death; that one cannot live without the other. Pretending death is not there means we are already dead. Recognizing death makes us immortal; immortal in the sense that we know we’ll fade away from this world, but we still live on in another. So, we are not really dead. All we have left behind is our memento mori. All that is left is a memory, a reminder of who we were.

      No intimidation is meant, of course. I do not believe that we must always be in the thoughts of our death, of dying. However, let us be mindful of it. Let it wake us up to appreciate our lives a little more. In all honesty, I feel like the world would be a better place if we did this. Not only would we be immortal, but immortal in the knowledge that death leads to life.