Memento mori describes the act of remembering that ‘thou art mortal’, the act of reflecting on death. I reflect on it often, not necessarily in the morose or moribund sense, but we all wonder what happens when we take the leap into nothingness, if it is nothingness.

Given what’s happened over the last four months I could easily find myself reflecting on it every moment. Losing two in my family in such a short time is tough, and anyone that faces such losses could be forgiven if they find themselves in a netherworld of such thinking. I find myself in that frame of mind too often these days.

I have never been a collector of things. I’m not oriented that way. All the things I have treasured in my life have been fleeting: music, which is only as long as it hangs in the air. Memories, both making them and pondering them. Sunset, dawn, walk, eat, love, time – all of it temporary. All of them fleeting. None of it static. Nothing that is permanent.

Permanent isn’t possible. We live in a universe where the arrow of time cannot as of now be turned backward. The laws of physics are not to be denied, so all of the things we think are permanent are illusory. We can so far do nothing to change it. It seems that the human thing to do is to pretend that we are in charge of permanence, that we are capable of hanging on to everything but then, the truth must be faced.

For all their say-so to the contrary, we humans do not easily embrace change. I certainly don’t. I have often admitted to being a willful man who does not always embrace change easily, and most especially change that’s against my ‘plan’. And aren’t almost all changes thus?

As a human, then, I have been guilty of trying to stop change and of course failing miserably. I’ve tried to hold onto relationships that were better left behind. I’ve tried to hold on to people that were destined to be parted from me. I’ve tried to prevent the bad, embrace the good and keep it no matter what, thwart the demons, fight the dragons.

But I could do nothing in the face of death. I could do nothing to retain love and fortune when it was not to be. I’ve tried to keep love on a leash. The inevitable result was not just to lose the status quo, it was to suffer for it.

When we remember we are mired in the temporal, we honor something that we as humans must experience – life itself. In Greek myth human lives are decided by the Three Fates: Clotho (meaning “The Spinner”), Lachesis (or “The Alloter”) and Atropos (literally “The Unturning” or, more freely, “The Inflexible”). One spins, one measures, one cuts. They defined mileposts of human life in the minds of Greeks.

People keep mementos of their lives and small belongings of others. For my mother, for example, I have a beautiful box from China, red wood and stamped aluminum chrysanthemums that softly shines. Inside I have some of her ashes in a blue and silver urn, postcards of my closest friends from a beloved friend that corresponded with my mom, her eyeglasses, photos and notes, a tarot card of The Empress.

Memento mori. Thinking on death, our relationship to it, the inevitability of it, the nearness of it, always walking among us. It is inexorable. So why keep these reminders nearby?

This box in which I have enshrined my mother isn’t sad or morose. It’s beautiful, full of meaningful things, meaningful moments and people, expressions of love. It’s the closest I can get to her now. Every morning when I get up I place my hand lovingly on the top of the box and say good morning to her. I speak to her now and then knowing full well she cannot hear me, but the connection in my heart comes to life and in those moments she is there.

In those fleeting moments the arrow of time is transcended, for in the realm of death time has no bonds. I can treasure the temporary, which I have always treasured. Music, love, hug, kiss, laugh – all of them are what is really in that lovely box. I cannot ultimately win against the arrow of time, and so these treasures, these fleeting moments, must be cast into the universe. We cannot hope stop them or keep them with us in any real way. We retain the echo of them within, but any feeble attempt to prevent them from moving through the universe is to suffer. So we must let them go.