Is it important to be remembered?

 Homo Sapiens (that’s us humans) emerged about 200,000 years ago. During that period of time it is estimated that 107 billion of us have lived on this planet. Today’s population is estimated at 8 billion. Crunching the numbers shows that 99.9% of all the humans who ever existed are dead. In modern times, world-wide, about 170,790 of us die every day. The recent death of a friend started me wondering how many people will remember him or the others who died that day and for how long. I think that if you’re the average person; one who didn’t have a street or building named after you, and weren’t a celebrity or billionaire philanthropist, and weren’t a person of notoriety like Hitler, Alexander the Great, Abe Lincoln or Genghis Kahn, you won’t be remembered very long. That thought led me to another question. What does it mean…to be ‘remembered’? Friends and family who knew you will occasionally think of you and will mention you in conversation with others but that won’t last long, and after the third generation of your descendants has passed no one will know who wrote that old letter found in a drawer, or who that is in that faded photo. When there is nothing or no one left who knew of you or at least had heard your name, you will have ceased to exist. It seems to me that most of us want to be remembered, and remembered at the apex of our lives, probably because we view being remembered as a continuation of our lives. As long as someone thinks and talks about us, we may be dead but we’re not dead dead.

How a person is remembered depends on where you died and where your remains are located. For example, I lived in northern Peru for nine years and witnessed that the average Peruvian has a much closer and deeper relationship with the dead than we have in the USA. The formal grieving period can last for a year. It can include a church mass from day one and then frequently through the year. Those who are strongly religious will wear black and not dance or sing during that year. They will visit the burial site at least monthly and will shed tears each time as if the death had just occurred. The cemetery visits of those who grieve continue through their lifetime.

The cemeteries vary considerably depending on the finances of the municipality. There are some, especially the newer ones that resemble a park-like setting. The photo below is more typical of a small village cemetery.

Some of the individual family tombs can be very elaborate (and expensive). They are well maintained and are never without fresh flowers. I suspect that those inside will be remembered by many generations for a long time. In the poorer villages there is no agency or individual responsibility for cemetery maintenance, thus they are generally older, have been vandalized, and in too many cases the collective tombs are in various states of disintegration.

Are these people remembered? Most probably there is no one left who remembers or knew them. They have ceased to exist in body and memory, their bones left to bleach in the sun.

So is it important to be remembered? I think that it is, at least in the short term by friends and family who knew them and find comfort from their memories. In the long term we will all be forgotten.