McKay Thomas

This is from McKay's blog:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

I remember reading that in high school as my teacher explained to me something so self-evident and obvious that my mind and heart very suddenly tangled: my death will come and the only thing within my control is how I complete the next minute.

The most interesting part of that memory is that I can’t recall what I did the next minute. Nor can I recall most minutes of my life. In fact humans have baked this knowledge in to their daily jargon through phrases like “I think I remember,” and “I’m pretty sure I…” Such statements beg to be disputed upon completion, but we still hear them and use them everyday. Humans just weren’t built for memories.

That is until death. Not our own, which is not something I can personally speak to, but of those we are close to. It is in these moments, the moments following the death of a friend or family member, that our memories of them come flooding to mind, and subsequently well up in the corners of our eyes. Memories are very precious in those moments. Particularly the moment where it hits you that you will never create another memory with them again. That’s the moment when your mind grabs hold of every memory available and holds on for dear life.

But then time passes.

It always does. And the memories that we held onto so dearly yesterday begin to float away. Can we really forget? Could we really allow ourselves to forget that one Monday morning and the pancakes she made? Or that late, late saturday night when we stayed up talking about tax policy (true story)? Or that time in the car when we laughed so hard we could barely calm ourselves down to continue working? These are all memories I have with friends who have passed away. I still have these with me.

We will forget, in most cases, nearly every memory we have of a person. We will forget most of what we knew of a particular person. Memories float away the same way spirits do, suddenly and without much warning at all. Until one day you’ll find yourself looking upwards at the sky and you’ll utter your loved one’s name and wonder if they’re still listening.

Most of our life will have gone unrecorded, by pen or memory, by the time we pass. But who we are in life, our character, will stay. Character requires very little memory. We can quickly say what a certain person would or wouldn’t do. How they would have acted in a situation even if they had never been in that situation before because character isn’t a photo, or a conversation, or an opinion, or an argument, or a gift. Character is the guiding light of one’s soul. And, said light, does not extinguish with death. It can, if heeded, guide all those who came in contact with it forever. That’s how character works. And that’s what we need to watch out for. The guiding light of those we love, both living and dead.

A friend of mine, Christian Rhineer, recently passed away and ever since I’ve been puzzling about how I should feel and how I should move forward. The most interesting part of my reaction to his death is that I haven’t really spent much time with him, particularly in that last few years. And yet I have been greatly affected by his passing. I have found myself writing down my memories with him and going through old photos, and thinking about all the things I could have said and all the time I could have spent. Life is full of these types of reactions. But deep inside I know that it isn’t my memories of him that make him important in my life. It’s who he was. I’ve known lots of people and have lots of memories. Memories aren’t what make someone great. Greatness is found in the smallest of details within one’s character and a well built character will stand longer than one’s tomb stone. And that is why I’m mourning Christian.

He had a warm character that was constantly engaged in other people. A builder. It’s the knowledge of who he was, his guiding light, that makes his death so particularly hard. And to his bride, Keri, the whole earth is yours for the taking and CJ’s light will guide you where you should go, and more importantly, who you should become.