Monday, March 9, 2015

365.30: My own mortality

I was awake at 3:30 this morning thinking.
I don't know what makes this crap pop into my head, but I laid there thinking about how much time has passed in my life, and how much time I might have left.
Then that got me thinking about my mortality.
When you die you barely have one generation after you who might, if they are close to you, remember you. Your smile, your laugh, what you liked to eat, how you liked to wear your hair. Everything about you that makes you........well......you.
If you don't invent something life changing, create a mass murder or do something so totally dumb that it goes viral, you pretty much will be forgotten about by the time your grandkids are grandparents.
*Poof* Gone! Like you never existed.
That to me is a very disturbing thought.
I am probably half way through my life span. At the most, I might live to be a hundred and I think, "well look how long it took me to get here, that's a long time from now."
But time starts to fly, FAST as you get older. 
I think the internet and social media have made it a little better as far as the common people, such as myself, having a lasting reminder to the fact that you actually did exist once.
I read once that in a hundred years Facebook  is going to have hundreds of thousands accounts for dead people. And as funny as that is, it's the truth.
Are you going to remember to delete your Facebook account before you die? I can guarantee you I won't think about it.
And OMGosh how funny is that going to be, twenty years from now when Facebook is full of 90 year olds sharing jokes and recipes and crude memes?
Even with all the social media, the rules still apply, if you don't do something horrendous or mind boggling you will, in the course of a few years, slip into oblivion.
I wonder, would anyone go back through my posts after I'm gone, just to see what a goofy person I was? Will any of my family miss me enough to scour my photos and posts just to be reminded what a total nut their mother/wife/sister/ friend was?
I remember all four of my Grandparents and even one of my great Grandparents but my kids never met them, their memories start with their Grandmother, my mother, nothing before that besides the occasional story from me about how much we loved spending time at my mother's mother's house.  How she spoiled us and no matter what happened or got broken, it wasn't our fault and Daddy was never allowed to get mad at us about it.
My children have a Grandmother that they never even had a chance to get to know that well. They were five and six when she died. They loved her and she loved everything about them. They would curl up in her lap and watch t.v. and listen to her oxygen machine whistle through her nose when she talked, they laughed and smiled and played with her all the time.
Neither one of them remember much about  her. Only what they hear in stories from me and their father. How sad is that? She was funny and smart and soooo tiny. She couldn't have been four foot nine. She had a little round face and a quick sense of humor. Everyone who knew her loved her and she must have known half of Moss Point Ms when she died. I know this because they were all at her funeral. They had to open up three rooms to hold all the people that showed up to pay her last respects. It was a sight to see.
But my children know very little about her.
And one day, sometime in the future, one of my great great grandchildren will be sitting at a table somewhere, lamenting about her own mortality and she will never know the woman who had the same thoughts and worries as she does.


Well that was deep!
Glad I got that off of my chest
See ya nerds!

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