The Slow Fade

I remember reading an article in National Geographic a while ago about a nomadic tribe that lived somewhere in the dry bush of Africa. What struck me most, was how the writer finished the article, which was by describing what the tribal customs were concerning the death of one of the members. When one of theirs died, there was no ceremony, there were no dances or rituals, no story telling, no wayward spirituality. The body was simply covered with dirt or leaves and the tribe simply moved on. To my western brain, this felt so... wrong. The fact that someone could die and never have existed seemed so foreign to me. But also somehow beautiful in it's simplicity.

These days, when someone dies, they never die all at one. Sure, there is the moment when they take their last breath, or their heart stops and they are declared medically dead (different definitions of medical death somewhat blur this line), but at that moment, they don't truly die. They die in bits and pieces. In fact, for some people, their funeral ceremony or wake begets more life than they have lived in a while. No, now dying only really begins with death. After death, their body is prepared, and people are amassed together to commemorate what once was. They are stuck in a box in the ground and covered in dirt. But they don't die then. They live on in the memories of those that knew them. every person has a different memory of someone that they knew who died, and those together constitute, together, what the person is now. Then one by one, things are forgotten. Phone numbers deleted, photographs thrown away, the dust from their skin swept up and thrown out. Them all that new him die, and those that knew stories of him die, then those that knew his name, until he has passed out of memory and time. However, is that possible in this day and age? Won't the coroner or city hall always have record of the death? won't there be an online yearbook with his name in it somewhere? Won't there be some hard drive with tax records or credit card statements that just sit there whirling away for decades? When will the dead truly die?

It seems impossible for someone that lives now to ever... die. There will be some version of them out their, some tether preventing them from ever leaving this earth. For this tribe, perhaps a deceased will be named no more than three generations on, and then no longer be. This is something that will seemingly never be granted those who live in a developed nation. Perhaps when the bank we used goes out of business, or there's a flood in the local courthouse or library we will be granted some reprieve, but really, most of us will just have to wait until the sun blows up and scorches everything we know into a crisp, or some alien race comes and trashes our planet.