At a certain age, there are more and more obituaries of those you have known. A life is summed up in a few paragraphs, and we ask, is that all there was? The unfortunate effect of obituaries, at least to me, is to make each individual life seem transient and inconsequential, like snow that covers the lawn one day and disappears two days later. The gravestone of Keats bears the epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” ostensibly at his own request, although we only have a friend’s word for this. The famous speech of Prospero in Shakespeare’s
July 21, 2023
July 21, 2023
July 21, 2023
At a certain age, there are more and more obituaries of those you have known. A life is summed up in a few paragraphs, and we ask, is that all there was? The unfortunate effect of obituaries, at least to me, is to make each individual life seem transient and inconsequential, like snow that covers the lawn one day and disappears two days later. The gravestone of Keats bears the epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” ostensibly at his own request, although we only have a friend’s word for this. The famous speech of Prospero in Shakespeare’s