Memento mori, memento vivere

One of the translations of the title phrase is “Keep death always before you so that you remember to live.” It brings to mind my favorite William Wallace line, “All men die, not all men really live.” In fact, many, many writers have encouraged being mindful of the brevity of life in some way, which by definition must include the finality of it. The recent Ash Wednesday is a Catholic observation of the reality of death, “Remember man that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19)

I remember that as a young Mom the scariest thing on earth to me was the possibility of losing a child. Second was leaving my children without a mother, so at that time thinking about death was not a habit of mine. I’m wondering now, what does it mean to keep death before me, in a practical sense? I’d say as a general rule, emotionally healthy people do not want to age, get sick, or die by any means. It makes me think that having a healthy fear of death is part and parcel of “keeping it before me.” So, it’s not about being a ‘lil afraid to die, per se. As for the people I know who have experienced a premature familial death? Their path is unimaginable to me, so I can’t speak to that.

Otherwise, I believe that it must be about a healthy awareness. There is a story about St. Benedict, who, after an attempt was made on his life,  repeated “Momento mori” quite a bit. In January of this year, I had an accident that definitely brought the words alive to me. Meaning, “Am I going to die?” were the first words my poor son heard from me when he found me laid out on the basement floor crying bloody tears. Not exactly a fearless move, Mom.

Suffice it to say, the immense physical pressure from my head injury was panic-inducing. After that I spent  about three hours  being checked out in the trauma room where my thoughts skipped from, “This could be it,” to “What if I live and have permanent brain damage or some other debilitating issue?” When the nurse came back and said, “Your tests are clear, you can go home,” my mom and I both burst into tears. That is back story, yet foundational to living with death before us seems to be gratefulness for the opportunity to live. 

Here is the extra cool part. A few weeks after my pain medicine ran out, and my injuries were not foremost in my mind, my focus homed in on what had been concerning me before the fall.  Not like checking the calendar and writing a list more like thoughts gone wild.  “I’m such an idiot and all my decisions turn to shit, what was I thinking!!” You know, when something is on your mind, and you fret about it but you don’t really know what to do about it or you do know what to do and you can’t get the gumption to do it, so then you fuss about it or drink about it or whatever your preferred coping methods are and it just buggers you and you get nowhere.  At the same time you are sure no one else ever feels like a funky chicken but rather sails through the days, living their best “Instagram” lives.   Oh well, maybe it’s just me. Anyway, this time  I did not hear agreement from the bitch in my head but instead heard,  “You are here. You could be gone from this world. Ppht, compared to that? Nah, you got this.” I was imbued with a sense of power. IMO power over oneself is the best kind because it helps us live up to our values. Feeling the limits of our time clarifies what is most important to us. My current theory is that most of the bad things that can happen, the things we fear, the things that stress us out, the things that are annoying, the things that don’t work like we want them to, lose their power to control us with the deep awareness that this life ends.  

“Keeping death before you,” was said to be a common phrase in the Order of St. Benedict, but there it was used as a way to be somewhat detached from life. I think back to that young mom I was, afraid to think of death and wonder if it actually can keep us more attached to the important things in life. Like it makes more room in our days for fun, laughter, forgiveness, joy, appreciation, friendship, love, honesty, music, art and, and, and . . . all the good things this life has to offer. I really believe that young mom I was ;could have been a more present and encouraging force in my children’s lives with an attitude of gratefulness instead of being so petrified of the possibility of loss. For me right now, I still run the gamut of human emotions and agitations, sometimes daily, but those normal things do not feel so heavy, or last quite as long.

Honestly, this is nothing new. It’s just that some obvious things in life stay in our minds but don’t really reach down to the seat of our souls until we, or someone we love experiences something that brings it home. A friend shared this song with me a few months ago and I was moved by the performance. It’s been around for about six years and, according to Youtube, ten million people have viewed it. In a Rachel Jones interview with the band I read, “Somewhere along the way,” Seth Avett writes of the album, “the line between music and life faded. The change was imperceptible at first. Then, when we weren’t paying attention, it evaporated altogether.”
https://blog.sevenponds.com/expressive-music/no-hard-feelings-by-the-avett-brothers