Kath said, 'Some people make a patchwork quilt, but I'll just make a little pile of memories to keep.'
We were clearing out our old bedroom - part of which included 18 years of stored materials that Kath had used to make curtains, kid's toys, camping accessories and a huge number of other things over the years. So many things that reminded us of the vast number of experiences that comes with setting up home, making a family and extending the house. Throwing out the things that hold memories does violence to who we are, because our memories encapsulate the meaning of a life. So let's hold on to them, in a little pile, to keep, to treasure, this life of ours together.
It reminds me of Richard's sadness as he told me of the weekend he spent shredding his late father's photographic collection. Its hard to comprehend the brutality we see in ourselves, as we dispose of a dead relative's possessions, especially ones that are pregnant with meaning and memory. With my mother's things we had at least three goes at getting rid of stuff - each time feeling a little less sensitive to the fact that we were throwing away something about Mum. Binning memories. In a way, disposing of Mum. In a way. Ouch.
And if we hold on to things for a generation or two, it can only be a matter of the vast infinity of entropic time, before the greatest treasure and memory becomes nothing. And meaning has gone. We have gone.
It struck me that 'meaning' doesn't happen without people. Things only matter when there's a living person to appreciate them - whether that is today or a memory of today. There is no meaning without people.
Surely it is obvious from our daily experience of disposing of things, and the realisation that death eventually overtakes each one of us, that there can be no meaning in this physical universe at all, unless there are some kind of everlasting people or at least an everlasting person, who doesn't forget, but treasures the memories of the things that happen in the lives that he loves. There is no meaning without people. And there is no ultimate meaning without an ultimate person. When there's nobody left it will all have been meaningless, unless there is someone everlasting to treasure the patchwork quilt of our lives.
