Today a classmate died. He was funny, brave and incredibly successful. It was a sobering moment to realize that the world outside didn’t stop and a memento mori for ‘if the heavens do not stop for princes they will not stop for me’.
Simone de Beauvoir, I remember reading somewhere, felt the same realization on hearing of Camus’ death. The sun would rise in Paris and the cars would rumble down the boulevards and there would be no Albert Camus.
But she had got in reverse. The hope lay precisely in that the sun still rose and people went to work as usual. Imagine what would happen if the world did stop when a prince or pauper died?
Ernest Hemingway famously wrote: ‘Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.’ Yet that is false. All true stories, if continued far enough, continue.
The tale continues in the children, in what we have or have not done. We become part of the blockchain. “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Bring on the dawn, bring on the traffic. We are remembered in it.