For those who have come before.

This is not a joyful post. But it's not without joy. Stay with me. 

I often think about the dead. Sometimes irrationally, sometimes maturely. Often.

It's so easy to think that it's just all about us isn't it? Those of us living at this moment.

I look at those beautiful black and white photographs of (mostly famous) people who have come before and they feel so un-real. Who are all of those other people? Were they just constructs of our imagination? But then someone well-known will die and I feel sadness. A real heart-pang at reading or hearing the first newsbreak. And I remember that people like Marilyn Monroe and Martin Luther King Jr died when my parents were alive so they were real, not just one-dimensional people in gorgeous vintage photographs and old 8mm frames.

The first two years of my life on this planet were shared with some familiar names who were in the last one or two years of their own: George Balanchine, Ira Gershwin, Joan Miró, Tennessee Williams, Ansel Adams, Truman Capote, Michel Foucault and Marvin Gaye.

I share my January 8 birthdate with Elvis and on that same date, many years ago of course, both Marco Polo and Galileo died.

In the past I've often thought that we all need to write serious journals as a record of the things we learnt and discovered and dreamed and thought. About how amazing it would be to read about the lives of my ancestors in great detail. But lately I've been so enamoured with the concept of each of us disappearing. Quietly, gracefully. As the generations forget, one at a time.

Hopefully for all of us we have many, many years before we have to think about this, but it's sometimes good to ponder, don't you think? Oh those who have shared this world.