DEATH

With the death of Charlie Purpura, one of the teachers in my department I've been put through a loop, philosophically. I've never approached death from this angle before, not to say that I've never known anyone who has died, because I have, but before it was always from being the one who dies. I looked at death very personally and it never really meant that much before. I mean, when a person dies what do they know? They aren't alive anymore and this world doesn't matter. On that front, I never really considered a concept of the afterlife that I believe in. I had learned of different widely accepted versions - christian, greek, norse - but I never picked one I truely believed. With the acceptance of the celtic traditions, I formed a personal version of the afterlife, that I don't want to explain right now.
Now, facing the death of Charlie Purpura and watching the people around me who knew him brave his passing, I'm forced to look at death differently and its frightening. What is left of a person when they die? Usually their body, but is that still the person? Couldn't that body be anyone? Just another stranger. But its not, its the limp flesh of someone you once knew. You have memories of the body. You can hear a voice and see their eyes and some can even feel their touch, but now its just a corpse. Its not the person you remember. That body is not the person. What do people leave behind when they die? Photographs, clothing, dirty dishes, an unmade bed maybe a wife and a son. But those things that remain are not that person. The person isn't their anymore. They are gone. In an attempt to keep that person by their side friends will put flowers on a table by the dead man's office. By the flowers are sad. They are trying to replace a person. Flowers can not be a person. Flowers do not speak, they do not have eyes, they can not take your hand or make you laugh. They are just flowers. They just sit in their vase and remind you that a person used to be there. A person that was whole. The flowers are empty.
Then you wonder if that person was really there. Is there anyway of knowing? The person is just a memory. Maybe a memory of a time they made you laugh or something they said that seemed so true at the time or maybe just foot steps interrupting your reading. That's all I remember of Charlie. His footsteps and how I would look up as his rubber soles hit the creaking floor. His footsteps were almost comforting. They were always their to interrupt my reading. But I don't remember anything else. He never made me laugh, he never took my hand. I don't even have proof he really existed, except through other people's memories. I could have made him up, heard his foot steps in his head and it would have all been the same to me. I know we was real once, because their are flowers outside his door now. But the flowers are not him.
It makes you wonder if it matters. Why we struggle through life and why we keep going. In the end the only thing left is flowers and maybe a photo. Then the flowers will whither and die and the photo will fade and be lost. So, does it matter? When I am dead will any one care? Flowers will be put up somewhere to replace the living breathing me and then my body will be put in a whole and a small stone will say my name and when I lived. But why? I don't want to be remembered on a stone and when I am no longer my body I don't want it to take up space any more. Just toss it away. Let it feed new flowers. Because in the end that's all that's left. Flowers. Flowers that wilt and die themselves.
Why do we struggle to be remembered? Charlie will be remembered by the few that knew him. they will be remember as a laugh and a truthful word, or even in his silence. Then after that he will be remembered in a list.
Charlie Purpura:
born_____
died______
married to ______
children________
won two emmy's
worked at NYU
That will be all that is left of a man. A few words. Barely enough for a paragraph. But he was a writer, someone will say. And yes, he was a writer. More simply "he was". Charlie has left behind the shows he wrote, but they are not him. They are a product of him, like his son, his photos and his body. Its the person that was important. The one part you can't keep. The part that in the end is replaced by flowers.