Immortality: Mind and Memory

Last week I officiated at a funeral and two memorial services.

In the Unitarian tradition the eulogy and remembrances are at the heart of end of life observances. This affirms that the deceased was this person and not that person, that she or he lived the life that circumstance shaped; but in the final analysis the deceased chose his or her path. We honestly remember and lovingly honor each life in its excellence and in its tragedy. And so I eulogized three unique personalities. Every human life matters is, indeed, sacred.

The great Russian poet Yevtushenko in his poem “People” intoned:

No people are uninteresting.

Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them in not particular,

and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity

making his friends in that obscurity

obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private

and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute

These are private.

In honesty and in love, taking my cues from those who loved and/or were closest to the deceased, I craft eulogies in my end of life ceremonies. Each occasion, though grief marbled, affrms the first UU principle--the inherent worth and dignity of each person.

And I talk about other things in the service that relate to the gestalt of grief and remembrance, including human mortality.

I also speak to the sort of immortality I believe in, linking immortality to love and to memory, saying “We must believe that whatever we have known and loved is ours, blended with mind and memory, joined to our souls. The dead are not dead if we have loved them truly. In our lives we give them immortality.”

I believe that this is so, the only sort of conscious immortality we hope for. We, the living, are the bridge to immortality. This is, when you think about it, an awe-inspiring power to possess and a sacred responsibility to wield—to keep alive, resurrect, if you will, the personality that has otherwise dissolved in time. (It was Jesus who at the Last Supper/Passover Seder told his disciples, "Do this in remembrance of me." He wanted to be remembered, one of the most plaintive appeals of the human condition.)

We have traditional yearly days of memory and affirmation: Memorial Day in Spring, All Souls/Veteran Day in Autumn, and today, Easter Sunday. I like the Jewish custom of a year of mourning that releases the mourner to a yearly remembrance, usually on the deceased’s birthday. That’s a good tradition. It grants freedom with responsibility.

I’m of the mind that ceaseless remembrance is the best, the sort recommended in a familiar reading that suggests that the spirit of the deceased is found through all that is beautiful, good, true in the world. You’ll surely recognize the words:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,

I am the softly falling snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain,

I am the fields of ripening grain.

This morning I want you to realize that relative to the life of a person you have loved and who has died, you are a link to their immortality. In this regard, to practice resurrection is to remember,-- perhaps without ceasing,—to remember honestly and lovingly. What an awesome power, what a sacred responsibility this is.

Hold it in your heart. Cherish it with your mind.

Practice resurrection.