Many years have passed away on the backs of autumn leaves in the winds of time, and even the name inscribed in the stone is not eternal; it crumbles away in the earth's infinite effort to erase the mark of the living from this world. There in her bed of snow, the common bed to us all, she rests forever, and someday, we shall join her.
Her name? Who can remember it, in order to grant some identity to someone who once lived and loved and burned with passion, as we live? No one. No one remembers the name of this one who finally discovered the truth only to find, in that moment, that her tongue had failed her and that her heart had frozen in order to preserve that moment of revelation forever.
Perhaps, in that moment, the times in life that she had thought herself happiest had flashed before her eyes. A wedding, or a birth? But maybe not. What if, what her heart remembered fondest, in that final moment, was not some accomplishment or triumph, but the smallest moment, a smile or a kiss. Perhaps what was most important was what she had taken for granted, the touch of a hand or the warmth of the sun.
Now, from beyond the grave, her heart beseaches mine to embrace life while it is still in my hands, even as it slips through my fingers. Accept the good with the bad and remember while I can. Enjoy the joy of companionship and make the most of relationships. Most of all, live life to the fullest.
Silently I promise her. Yet I know that I lie, and that the language of her sage heart has fallen on deaf ears. It is in human nature to forget. I know that I will forget what is important to me, and what really matters. I know that I will forget her.
Life is a journey of forgetting and only after living do we remember what we were too blind in life to see. But even now you are embarking on a wave of forgetfulness. You will forget reading this and discovering the error of your ways even as I am forgetting my own. I know that tomorrow I will be forgotten, and that tomorrow, I will remember no more..
