The Life of My Dead

Watering and Burning Memories

“The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

Who Lives And Who Dies

As far as they’re concerned, all the people in the photograph above are dead.
With the help of this photo we can still see them, and by telling a story I could conceivably reanimate them, temporarily.

Of course I could only do that with the three individuals I know. The others came to me pre-dead, and I’d have to resuscitate them solely through fiction. Perhaps with actors’ voices and sound effects I could create a radio dramatization, and you, with eyes closed, could then see them even better.

Introductions. My mother is the little girl on top, in the middle. I never met her father or mother, sitting on the left, or her uncle, in the middle. Her aunt and her husband, are at right. I called her Bunia, and she played a big part of my childhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I got stories! The two other girls on top remain two dimensional, unknown to anyone I know, but very possibly rejuvitated in someone else’s thoughts.