Memory Crystals

The richness of my life shall be yours.

Ever since my mum died a few months ago, I have felt this deep and still rage. It made itself known before that dreadful moment in my helplessness as I sat beside her in the ward. It made itself known when I saw what the cancer had done could not be undone. It made itself known when I saw there was nothing else I could do to delay death’s embrace.

Cancer. That such a thing still stops people from living longer lives is a reason for my rage. There is unfairness, and then there is unfairness. My mum was robbed of her life too early, and we are robbed of her. Still, it is not the full reason for my rage.

Death. That such a thing still stops people from living longer lives is a also a reason for my rage.

I think I have lived much of my life as if death will never touch me, even if it is not true. It’s because I do not want it to be true, but also because I know it does not have to be true. Death is nowhere woven into the laws of physics, the laws of nature. It is a technical barrier, one that can be overcome with lots of hard-won knowledge. We all know it will not be simple. To make ongoing repairs to an aging human body, cells need to multiply quickly in order keep the body healthy. Cells that multiply too quickly can easily become uncontrolled, which is cancer. So creating knowledge that will help people live longer will in turn need us to solve the problem of cancer even more deeply. The knowledge that is needed for such progress is not easy to come by, but the big thing is that it is physically possible. We can answer stop death’s embrace with the right knowledge.

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I hope to pass as much to my child as my mum passed to me. When my child was born, I felt suspended in time, while the world revolved 180 degrees around me in space. I no longer live my life as if death will never touch me. Especially now that I know, to paraphrase Elizabeth Stone, my heart has gone for a walk outside my body in the form of a child. And so I am even more compelled to write, and to leave some presence of myself in my words for someone, somewhere.

When I was a child, I adored Superman, not least because he is immortal. But it has, as of late, got me thinking about writing more. What if each article I write is like a memory crystal, and the portfolio of assets, as Corey Wilks calls it, which all my articles add up to, is like the Fortress of Solitude?

Because these memory crystals are the only things that Kal-El’s father, in the face of certain death, could pass down onto his son, and in words that have never left me.

Jor-El: [bidding his son farewell, as Lara looks on]:

You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But we will never leave you ... even in the face of our death. The richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I’ve learned, everything I feel ... all this, and more, I ... I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son. This is all I ... all I can send you, Kal-El.