I stated
keeping a journal recently. Not some diary to keep today’s list of items I
accomplished. I suppose I always felt weird writing: “Today I got up and logged
in to Facebook. After the cat pictures stopped amusing me, I logged off and
showered. After that I headed off to work.” This part of my life is not
terribly exciting. I sleep, I go to work, and I go to school. Instead, I have
been writing about my memories. Thinking about the people that have been part
of my life and remembering how they affected me. Each of them has impacted me
and shaped my story. And sometimes, it feels like I have no one that will carry
these memories beyond this generation.
Accepting
this fact has been a trial. My family line stops at this generation. My uncle
never had children and neither have my brother and I. Certainly, there are
cousins and such. But their story isn't ours. My cousins may well remember me
to their children, but after that who will keep my memory alive? What lasting
mark do I leave for the world? Who am I to the future? I don’t want to be an
insignificant speck. I don’t want to believe that I lived this life simply to
enable me to die.
We carry
in us the memory of our parents and our grandparents. These people imparted
their memories of the generations before that. We keep these memories alive and
pass them from one generation to the next. In part, that is why I am so
interested in my family history. I want to be able, even if only for a moment,
to hold on to those of my line that came before me and to remember them. That
their name will echo into this current time. But there will be no one after me
to carry my memory into a future world; to know that I existed, for however
long I will be here.
I keep
trying to wrap my mind around why the fates played out the way that they did.
Of the four children conceived between my mother and my father, I am the only
one to survive. Prior to my birth, my older brother, James Bryan, lived to be
five and passed away in a tragic accident. Two years later, my mom conceived
what we believe were twin and miscarried. Yet, a few weeks later the doctors
agree that she miscarried and remained pregnant. My twin and o separated. And a
few years later, she miscarried again. Four chances to carry on out family line
and the sole survivor is incapable of fathering a child.
Thinking
about all of this made me think of the final soliloquy in Blade Runner:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off
the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the
Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in
rain…" There are things that I have done, places I have seen, and felt
that are so personal and so unique that no one else has that exact memory. And
I am frustrated that there is no one to carry these for me beyond my death.
Of course,
it isn't just about me. I hold the memories of my parents in me as
well as the memories of my brother. After I pass, there is no one to hold their
memories either. My grandmother and grandfather Matross have my wonderful
cousins to carry their memories. But, even those are diluted by time and
distance. They didn't get to spend the same amount of time with them
as I did. And my father Wayne, who contributed half of the material to make me,
he has no one in his family to carry his memory after I am gone.
I know
that I have my friends to remember me. But most of them are of a similar age as
me. We are likely to pass at a similar age together. And I feel weird about
asking them to have their children carry my memory. Who am I to them, aside
from some strange friend of their parents’? Without the familial bond, there is
no need for these children to pass it on beyond them.
I suppose
that is why I write, hoping that something that I put down on paper or float
out into the internet will become my legacy. That it will be the seed of my
memory that will someday cause a man or woman to say, “Who was William Cody
Matross?” And in that question, bring my memory forward from now to exist in
that time. That this question will prompt them to research me and find out about
my parents and my brother, what my life was like, what were my passions. And I
suppose I write to give them bread crumbs to figuring out what I was and that I
here. That I lived and loved and I made a difference in people’s lives. And
that those before me existed and that they form a long line stretching back to
the beginning of time. I suppose I write, not for the people of this age, but
for those that will come after us.
