Live Forever

I was an aunt long before I was a mom, and really cherished the relationship I had with my sister Liz’s three children. I came along on family trips, took the kids tobogganing on snow days (and even some that weren’t official snow days!) and loved being there to feed the kids or tell them a story before turning out the light.  

One night, not long before the holidays, I was tucking my nephew James into bed and asked him what he wanted for Christmas? James’ first word was ‘car’ and he loved all kinds of cars, trucks and diggers, so I thought the big dump truck I had in mind would be just the ticket. Imagine my surprise when, without missing a beat, he said “I want everyone I love to live forever.” Gulp. That’s a tough one. When a child asks you for a puppy for Christmas, you can explain that Santa makes toys but he’s not an animal shelter (because it’s too cold for puppies at the North Pole!) but what on earth can you say to a request like that? Buying time, I told him that the next day we could write a letter to Santa and kissed him goodnight. 

As I lay in bed that night, I thought about what James had asked and realized what was behind it. Both my father and his other grandfather had died very recently, prompting his little sister to exclaim “Now we got NO grampas left!” He and his siblings were facing their first experience of loss and his childish wish for everyone to ‘live forever’ was as clear an expression of our inability to understand and accept the finality of death as any I’ve heard. “Please God, can you make those I love live forever? Can you make this not happen, can you make it not true, can you turn back the clock of time so we can all live forever in a world where we were happiest, surrounded by those we love?’

James’ wish made me think about the writing of Viktor Frankl, who had more occasion than many to reflect on the importance of memory, the pain of loss and the permanence of love. Imprisoned in a concentration camp, separated from his wife and parents and all he knew and loved, in his book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ Frankl wrote:

“My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing – which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in our spiritual being, our inner self. Whether or not the one we love is actually present, or still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thought, and the image of my beloved.” 

Frankl understood in that moment that we live forever in the hearts of those who remember us and that love lasts beyond time and transcends space and distance. Although we die, love does not. We bereaved know this as we slowly pick up the pieces and rebuild our lives with our beloved in our heart rather than our arms. Even though they are no longer physically present, we carry those we love within us, and they come to life in our memories and in the stories we and others tell about them. 

As I considered all this while ruminating on James’ request, I thought about my mother’s grandfather, her ‘Grandpa Jim.’ My mum’s father died when she was 11 and her family was taken in by her grandfather. Her cousins had also ended up fatherless, so hers was the third family he raised on his blacksmith’s salary, the last two on his own after the death of his wife when my mum was a small child. I knew so many stories about him; tender stories, funny stories, cranky yet indulgent grandpa stories – he’s as vivid a character to me as anyone I’ve ever known. But I didn’t know him. Grandpa Jim died 2 years before I was born. Yet in telling me her stories and memories of a beloved grandfather, my mother brought him to life in the imagination of a young great-granddaughter who would never meet him.    

The next night as I tucked James into bed, I told him I’d written to Santa about his question. “Really, what did he say?” he asked, wide-eyed. “Well, he said that he can’t keep everyone alive forever because he can’t change the laws of nature (setting aside flying reindeer and visiting every child on earth in one night I guess!) but that if you tell stories about people, they live forever in your heart. Do you think we should give it a try?” “Yes,” he nodded.

So we agreed that from now on, every time I tucked him in, instead of reading a book, we would do ‘Family Stories.’ He could pick the person (Nana, his Mom or Dad, his sisters, aunties, uncles or cousins, his dog Sadie, even himself when he was a baby) and I would tell him stories about them. This went on for many years and as it turns out, Santa was right, because as long as James lives, as long as he remembers, those stories are alive inside him, and everyone he loves will live forever.

I thought of this again when Peter died. So many people shared wonderful stories of the kindness, thoughtfulness and inspiration that my incredible husband was to them – most of which I had never heard before. His goodness, his kindness, the indelible imprint his big heart and amazing life made on them now lives inside of me alongside my own precious memories. He lives forever in me and in everyone whose life he touched. 

“What you have experienced” Frankl says, “no power on earth can take from you. Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.” Indeed, it’s the only kind of being we will all truly have. So seek out the stories, share them, tell them and they’ll live forever.