Dear Oblivion
I got to know you when Augustus Waters said he was afraid of you.
Oblivion(n) means Being Forgotten. Forgotten by the people, as if we never existed in this world. You are inevitable. But I fear you too.
I never knew anything about you until I read The Fault In Our Stars book by John Green. I was eighteen then, yes, but I’m ignorant. Eighteen years of my life, and I never knew there was a concept of being forgotten. I have no excuses here. But then I learnt about you, and you never left me alone. You are constantly lurking over in my head that I had to look into you from time to time.
I lost three people I know to suicide. One of them is a very close friend of mine. I was scared that he might be forgotten. They said no one remembers the dead after they die, not totally, but they will just be a photo on the wall, a past, a memory-good/bad doesn’t matter. The pain will go, tears will stop flowing, their survivors will accept the change- the person not being around, they move on and live their lives.
But do we forget them? I don’t know, I didn’t. I’m afraid I might forget him one day. I might not think of him again. Sometimes, I wonder — When he chose to take his life, did he think about what happens after that? Did he think he would leave a great deal of pain to the people who loved him? Was he selfish? Should I judge him and punish him by forgetting? Should I be selfish and hold on to his memory?
There is this animated movie called Coco. It shows us that ‘when no one remembers you after your death, you will fade away.’ Does that happen? If yes, I don’t want him to fade away. I want him to be there. So I just recollect all those memories I have with him. I want to believe he exists somewhere. Is that selfish? I question myself. I don’t know the answer. But now, as they said, there is no pain, yet there are questions to which I can never find answers.
What if the person who is dead or dying, wishes for you to forget them? And asks you to live your life as if the person didn’t exist in our lives? Would it be a boon or bane for the person who survived them? Because the people who love us never really wanna forget us no matter the pain they need to suffer because you are no more with them. Because we humans endure pain.
The idea of being nothing grand while living and then being forgotten because we become a nobody when we die is so insane. It’s not that I am afraid of being forgotten by people in general but by the ones who loved us. I may not live a magnificent life to write my name on the maps of this world where one day someone comes exploring and finds my name etched in there. Yet I fear of you, for the possibility of people in whose hearts I carved my name might forget that there was someone there, and they might just overwrite it with some other name. We don’t know.
You scare me for what might be, after me and what is now, after someone I loved. How do I interpret you? Some say forgetfulness is a gift they gain as they age, so they don’t need to worry about the things that haunted them some time ago in their life. Some say it is a curse that you won’t remember the happy memories. As for everything, there is a pro and a con, you too have both.
Idk where to stop, this letter and my thoughts about you.
But if it were for you to choose between letting people forget or not, what would you choose? I’m betting on the odds that you will be scared of yourself too. If I were to meet you one day, let us talk about all the things we witnessed.
Till then, I will hold onto memories of everything along with the people I love, lost and cherish.
Always remembering,
Sushritha Danturi
