Memento mori

I wonder if you can tell the age of a person by the number of dead people’s phone numbers he still has saved on his phone? It could be like judging the age of a tree by the rings on its core.

A young person may have only a few. I feel like I must have at least a hundred. Every time I scroll through my phone’s address book, I am struck by the faces that come to mind of colleagues and friends and family members who have passed.

“Have passed” is an increasingly common euphemism for “have died.” It seems somehow less edgy, less definitive. They’ve “moved on,” but they haven’t moved out of my address book. I can’t delete them. That name and number in my phone is like a grave marker, a tangible remembrance. That little bit of digital data carries immeasurable weight.

As someone who has more years behind me than ahead of me (at least on this earth), even my phone’s address book is a reminder that I’m getting closer to final exams (another euphemism). My address book is a little bit like the skull that medieval philosophers would keep on their desk as a reminder of what will befall us all.

My high school friend who died too soon. My mentor who I still wish I could talk with. A neighbor I only really got to know in her final months battling cancer. A priest who was for me the embodiment of God’s mercy. The faces come to mind. I almost always say a quick prayer for them. I figure there is a very good chance all of us will spend some time in Purgatory getting ourselves cleaned up before we meet the Lord, so I take comfort in the Church’s encouragement that we pray for the souls in Purgatory.

For a long while, I would promise “thoughts and prayers” when someone needed them, but my memory was never as good as my intentions, and it would be easy to forget. Following the example of my uncle, a Trappist monk who spent a large part of his day praying for people, I started keeping a list.

When people on that list died, I would put a little cross by their name, a reminder to keep praying. My prayer list is starting to look like the Hill of Crosses in northern Lithuania, and perhaps serves the same function.

Recently, my prayer list has grown a bit too rapidly. A church musician with whom I once edited a literary magazine in high school. An acquaintance in a serious bicycling accident. A woman looking for a teaching job in a down market.

But especially for my mother-in-law. She’s at the venerable age of 97. A French citizen born in Algeria, her emigration to the United States with her husband was an act of pure faith — in him and in the American dream. She was a great cook, a loving mother, her husband’s helpmate. Her days are quiet now, and she has grown quiet too as the veil of old age descends about her.
It is too late to talk about the past or the future. It is not too late to embrace her still with love and with prayer.

I laugh at those health statistics that say the chance of death is reduced by such and such a percentage. No, the chance of death remains 100% for all of us. That phone address book, that list, my mother-in-law: They are all a little memento mori, reminders that this is not our final destination. God willing, what is to come will surpass all our expectations.

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