Remember you must die.

Memento Mori

“Memento mori is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards. The practice of memento mori, or remembering your own death, is often recommended because it fosters a profound awareness of life's transience, encouraging people to prioritize what truly matters.”

The first time I realised how one’s existence can be fragile was when I first read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I mean, I had some idea of what it was like to have certain experiences at a young age, especially from secondary school, but when I had read the book, I felt this longing in my soul.

I had lived vicariously through this boy's letters, and I began to think about how a boy could live such an odd life shaded by odd friends and be so hopelessly in love with a girl. I thought about how the girl (in the novel) who is filled with life and desires love someone that gives her purple marks on her body, or how another boy could fall in love with another boy even though the one he loved couldn’t love him fully.

I had come to this sunken realisation about how life is almost too fragile and how easy it could ruin you if you give it to others to break or you decide to break it yourself. After I had read the book, I had gotten my laptop and started writing what would soon become my first novel. I had this urge to start writing things that felt like Charlie did (the main character in the novel).

There’s this sound that has grown popular about how one day you were seventeen and you woke up, and you aren’t seventeen anymore, and you will never be seventeen because that is the way life is and that is how it would forever be. However, in my desperation I have attempted to be seventeen forever. I have acted too much like a child when I shouldn’t have and have actively hated adulthood.

I have spent my time cuddled in my bed, praying to God about how I do not want to crave being a child and remembering only scents I, alone, would remember. I have written letters to myself reminding me that I shouldn’t grow up too fast, because growing up only makes you forget, and forgetting is how you become an adult.

I had even hoped for Peter Pan to steal me away and make me stay in Neverland so that I would never know what it is like to be heartbroken, or I would never feel another person’s lips. That I will never know what sexual innuendos meant or what it meant to take care of your hair and care too much about how to look. I didn’t want to know what it meant when a boy and girl had done if they spent too much time in a room or felt the burn of alcohol down my throat. Most of all, I didn’t want to become someone I was deemed to become—a wife that should give her husband enough sex and a mother that cared for her children deeply. I didn’t want to soon hear the squeak of my bones and feel the rustiness of it. I didn’t want to have grey hair and be ill one day, or to sleep and never wake up again. I had grown a desperate attachment to my childhood.

I thoroughly enjoyed not knowing things. However, remaining innocent itself is a sin. Life will never grant you full sobriety; it’s always filled with emotions that you can write too many poems about and writhe in your bed with secrets you cannot tell your friends.

No wonder Oscar Wilde wrote about how time is jealous. It keeps waiting for you to grow up so it can steal your youth and give it dust. Time does not like when you take too many adventures and glee at new risks. It doesn’t like when you fall in love and hold another person in your arms. It doesn’t like moments of serenity. That’s why writers exist. That’s why each person here tries to encapsulate every moment they can in ink (be it physical or digital). None of us would be the first. Shakespeare did this so much because of how much he hated time.

I’m not trying to say that life is a sad thing and all of the things you do will be stolen away by time, even though it is true that yesterday will become a memory or a day you will never remember living. I’m writing this because I have realised that everything will wither and fleet away. Your innocence died a long time ago, and for some, your dreams are dead, covered by the lint and dust of hustle culture. For some, your youth is slowly beginning to die, and you can jump as high as you can. And for another, your life has just truly begun.

I have realised you cannot hold on to things forever; maybe it is why I try to grab God by his arm. He is the only thing that lasts forever, and that might not be anyone’s truth, but it is mine. Too much knowledge will ruin you, ignorance will betray you, life will lure you, and your body will fail you, but God remains eternal. He is not fragile. Maybe that is why many bow their heads in church and cry for more. It is because they know that from Him, life isn’t as fragile anymore and death is not as scary as it sounds. In fact, time will become their friend, and woe might flee them.

I know Woe has left me. It is why I have stopped craving childhood and embraced my youth. It is why I will embrace when my life will no longer be mine but my husband’s and children’s. It is why I will embrace my grey hair and wrinkled hands. Surely, it must be easier than begging for more time and miraculously beginning a rebellion—calling myself a Neverlander and doing things that only Peter Pan will advise me to do. Perhaps it would be fun, but it can only remain a dream. I cannot be a catcher in the rye; I cannot hold on to what is meant to pass away.

One day, even though it will not be soon. I will stop writing on here. I would spend my time telling too much fiction to my children or spilling ink on paper. One day my hands will be too weak to pen my ideas, and my imagination will lay me bare. One day I will be old, and I would hope heaven is like Wonderland with mad hatters and white roses painted red. Or maybe it will be something other than I can imagine.

So here is my conclusion. Life is fragile, time is jealous, and memories will fade, but one thing remains eternal. For me, it is God and Himself within me. It is his ability to bring back memories and give me youth. It is his promised Neverland, up above where I might never grow again.

One day I will die, and so will my children; one day my skin will decay, and so will yours. It is not a bad thing to say. It is not an evil thing to discover. It is life, and we are doomed to the jealousy of time and the fragility of life. That is the truth, and when you realise this, when you really feel it. You will know what to do.

Till next time❤️

E.L.

P.S. If you’ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I hope I’m a better influence than Lord Henry.