Rocks of a Kind

This is it. You've died. It's the end of the line for you, bud. Nothing can stop the march of time, and that retinol won't either. Now that you're dead, are you happy with what you'd done so far? What will the people say?

"They were too young!"

"They had it coming."

"About time."

"Too soon!"

Whatever you did, it doesn't matter to you anymore. You've died and your body is being buried as we speak. Look, there goes your casket, down the deep, dark hole you should never have to imagine, but I'm going to make you. The worms are everywhere and so are your fluids. Get comfortable. You'll be asleep for a long time... and you had no time to set an alarm.

Years passed after your uneventful funeral. Let's say, for the sake of the story, you're an average Joe, Joleen, Joe Mama, or Jo; whatever name you prefer. You lived an average life, maybe a little above average sometimes, but it still constitutes to a funeral in which less than many attend. Those people die some day, and your descendants drift farther every time. Perhaps your bloodline ends.

The bottom line is, you've been remembered, respectfully, but those that carry your memory have also been remembered. Now, who's remembering you? Your gravestone withered away, crumbling to dust, and in its place stands a very large tree. When I say years have passed, I mean years that are so long, the cemetery in which you'd been buried had been turned into a local park.

Years later, a mother and her young son have a picnic under that same tree. He's got an affinity for rocks and minerals alike. He comes across your gravestone, but of course, he doesn't know that. They're all individual pieces now. But he finds one "rock" with a strange shape etched into it. A letter, perhaps, of your name. He shows his mother, "mum, look! A new rock! Do you think it would fit in my collection?"

She takes one look at it and nods. "Of course it will. Now, come here and have a bite of this sandwich." Nodding, he puts it in his pocket. 

Do you feel special; Remembered, now that a young child finds a piece of your gravestone, calls it a rock, and now wants to put it in his collection? Throughout the picnic, he runs around a bit, then eventually feels around in his pocket for his special, new rock. He realizes it is missing and there had been a hole in that particular pocket. He feels remorse, although he does not realize that it was your gravestone he was mourning over.

He doesn't feel sad for you, he doesn't even know you. Get a grip, dude.

"Mum, I lost my rock! Please help me find it!"

His mum, while vaguely remembering the letter carved into it, aids her son in the search of his rock. She finds it, only, now he is unsure if it was the same one he found. It looks... different. He accepts it, however. He goes home, adds it to his collection of shiney minerals, and goes to sleep that night.

Deep down, he likes the rock he discovered, but can't shake the feeling that, what if this "imposter rock" isn't the rock he'd originally found? What if, the "real" rock was still waiting to be rescued under the tree? So, while this fictional child is tormented with the thought of nothing being real, you are dead. You shouldn't care. You don't have the capacity to.

His rock collection, to him, is a wonder. He obviously has favourites. He like the shiney rocks the most, but he was planning on liking the letter-engraved rock more, until he began to feel bitter and almost resentful for it. This was most likely not the rock he'd originally discovered, he could feel it. There wasn't much he could do but pretend to like it, however. This young boy was afraid of making his rocks feel bad.

One day, he brings his rocks over to one of his uncles. A man who studies rocks for a living. The boy asks, "hey, if I could sell you these, how much would you pay?" His uncle laughs and says, "oh, no, boy. These rocks do not have value to me. They're common minerals... however..." His uncle notices a strange "rock" with a letter engraved onto it, fading, almost.

"This is not a rock. It appears to be... part of a tombstone, perhaps? A memorial?"

"What's that?"

Over night, this boy realized that he'd basically robbed a dead person, you, and he was afraid you'd come find him to take revenge. Kids, am I right?

The next time he visits that place, he's much older. A pre-teen, if you will. He has the special rock in hand. He'd been keeping it safe with all his other rocks all this time. Although he harbored unspoken, childish feelings toward it, he'd learned to appreciate it much more, knowing it belonged to another before it had belonged to him. He wanted to return it now.

So, kneeling down near the tree, he tries to look for other remnants that he wanted to piece together and discover your name. He is unsuccessful. Frustrated, he does not return the rock and pretends that returning it was not actually his intent. It was to put your gravestone back together, but seeing as there was not gravestone left to put, he might as well take the last piece and keep it safe. He was trying to do a "good deed" but now he just looks stupid, skimming through dust.

Does it make you happy to know a person still cherishes your "memory" in a roundabout way?

Years pass, yet again. The rock collection is put into a box, and the box is put into a box. The kid is not a kid anymore. He's actually an adult man that had learned to appreciate the little things. He became what he knows now as a "geologist." He moves out of the house, forgets the rocks, and moves on to other rocks. His parents move out, forget the box, and move on to other boxes of larger, longer proportions.

 A new family moves in. Whilst playing hide-and-seek, a young girl discovers the rocks in the box, in another box. She doesn't like rocks, but she does like shiny things. So, in good nature, she takes the shiney minerals and dumps the piece of your gravestone behind. 

Where does it end up? Who knows! You could use math or statistics to predict where it could have ended up, but who actually cares enough to do the math for you? You're dead. Maybe it got kicked under a couch. Maybe it's sitting on the mantel behind a Santa statuette the family was too busy to take down. Maybe the dog ate it and defecated it back into the soil where it originally was meant to be.

Do you feel sad? Forgotten? Now that your gravestone is no longer "special" in the sense that someone would care about it, not because it was shiney or looked interesting, does it feel like you've truly died?

The rock wasn't the point. You aren't the rock. Nobody forgot you. As far as we know, your skeleton is laying under the tree, gravestone or not. Your atoms probably dissolved back into the Earth and is now in the air, in the trees, in a carrot some pregnant woman is eating right now. The boy didn't find you special, the boy found the rock special. He didn't know it was you. 

The girl didn't hate you. She didn't dump you into the dirt. The people who buried you did. Besides, she wanted shiney rocks. She didn't like your gravestone. But she didn't hate you. For goodness sake, she doesn't even know you existed.

But the rock wasn't the point. Again, you aren't the rock. Nobody forgot you. If you truly died, you wouldn't know a thing about a boy or a girl rejecting or accepting your gravestone. 

Perhaps this is actually about you, right now, not about your untimely death. 

Whatever it is...

Throughout the time I've spoken, we were too focused on the rock to realize your body never left the casket. This "rock," a "memory" of you, rejected, accepted, cherished, forgiven, hated, whatever... was never you.