Forgiveness of the dead.

Forgiveness of the dead. Seeking that which can never be given. Forgiveness for what we did not do, what we did. What the dead did, what they did not do.

Forgiveness of the dead is a quaternity of emotions and experience. The quaternity depicted as a circle with a cross within it. One of the oldest symbols of spirituality known. I’d propose an accurate map of the relationship between the dead and the living, as it is an accurate map of what was within and between us, what is no longer.

This quaternity can be an act of health, or one of illness. I do not include forgiving the dead for dying. That is unfortunate and almost always springs from, is nourished by, sometimes, created by a spiritual illness, a pathological longing of the soul. We are to grieve, not obsess.

Grief is a quaternity as it is still a union of two, mirrored within each other. What is done, what is not. The mirror of what we sought, what we received. The dividing line (almost too conveniently) delineated as love and hate. That one of the two involved in the discourse is now dead and memory, rarely changes the conversation.

I’ve been losing friends to death since I was 30. Not acquaintances, the guy you knew in high school who someone told you died of an overdose, real friends, defined as people who care about you, and who you care about. And that two-way street is usually a mutually pleasurable experience, which is one of the best parts of being human.

When that street is interrupted, it doesn’t stop. It keeps going but it’s no longer as pleasant, and now more purposeful, more about making the effort to maintain the road, rather than enjoying another wander along it.

Maybe that metaphor is off road — the memory of a dead friend is no effort, the memory is always there and sometimes regretted, because to remember is to remember everything, not just the joys, but the difficulties, difficulties that might have been resolved but now will never be, the regret that another moment cannot be shared, knowing how much that friend would have enjoyed it; the constant question ‘why/ how/ what came between us?’ knowing there will never be an explanation, nor a chance to remake what had been.

A quaternity of mourning the dead, missing the dead, wishing to change what occurred and now never can be undone, and the chance the dead might revise your memory, simply tell you, you have it wrong.

To forgive them although only one will know, to forgive yourself is to give both, the memory of another act of love. This is how we forgive the dead, and find the forgiveness we seek from the dead.