A closed point
It seems to Sven Ortoli that mortuary cremations “lack an end point, a moment when we recognize that the door is closed. This is what happens in a cemetery, or on a pyre on the banks of the Ganges. ‘The sacred goes with the closure’, notes Régis Debray.”
Many endings are missing from a point at all. Grief has not begun. The void is so large that it looks like a black hole absorbing all the points that one would like to write in it. Ink is invisible.
While the end point brought by the ceremony, the “closing of the sacred”, is a little severe, except for those who manage to contemplate the seagulls and say to themselves “Hey, wouldn’t one of them be my dear departed?”.
Hanging points for the party
In between, I prefer the ellipsis. Personal ceremony of remembrance. I even believe that celebrating the birthday of a deceased person has more meaning than that of a living person. The living need others to celebrate their destiny, but in this collective requirement the need for me is optional. The deceased has no other existence than in my inner universe. Should I give him a mental cremation, recognize that the door of my memory is closed?
Or block it in the open position. Pass in front of the entrance always lit. Marvel at the moving scenes that I see replayed. Knowing that it is by looking at them that they keep their vivacity. That the ashes contain no trace of the cherished beings. That this information, the best possible approximation of the soul, is stored in my convolutions rather than in the feathers of a seagull.
That I can make the beloved one play in my inner theater, in the midst of others. For even the living do not exist otherwise in my reality. The dead can also advise me, bring me the empathy I need. They don’t ask for anything in exchange.
The alive-dead
They are still alive, somewhere, without this place questioning me. It’s a part of my mind. I keep much more information about them than a digital file has ever received. Information that they did not have themselves, in part. An enriched existence.
They’re damn alive, when I think about it. Horror cinema has screwed us up with the undead, bodies without spirits. Well let us now bathe in tranquility with our alive-dead, spirits without bodies, who serve and strengthen us.
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