At our parents’ memorial niches
Older Brother:
Father has been dead for forty-seven years now. I believe he must have been reincarnated long ago—perhaps into a new life on another star. By now, he has probably forgotten everything about this life: us, his weaknesses, and all the times he was unhappy.
Me:
That is a strange but comforting thought—that he may have been given a completely new beginning. But if he has forgotten everything, in what sense would that new being still be Father?
Older Brother:
Perhaps our memories are not what we truly are. They may belong only to one particular lifetime. Something deeper continues.
Me:
You mean something like a soul—an essence that remains even when the personality and memories disappear?
Older Brother:
Yes. The old personality dies, but the essence takes another form.
Me:
Then perhaps forgetting is necessary. If he remembered all his former sorrows, he might carry too heavy a burden into the new life.
Older Brother:
Exactly. A new life should be genuinely new. Otherwise, it would merely be a continuation of the old one.
Me:
Still, I feel a little sad imagining that he has forgotten us.
Older Brother:
Why?
Me:
Because we have carried the memory of him for forty-seven years. We come here, pay tribute, and speak of him. Yet somewhere, according to your belief, he may be living without the slightest awareness that we ever existed.
Older Brother:
Perhaps forgetting does not mean that everything has been lost. His experiences may remain within him in ways he cannot consciously recognize.
Me:
As instincts, perhaps? Certain fears, sympathies, or inclinations whose origins he does not understand?
Older Brother:
Perhaps. He may be kinder in his new life because he once lived an unfulfilled one.
Me:
That is a beautiful possibility. His suffering would not have been meaningless, even if he no longer remembered it.
Older Brother:
Yes. The memory may disappear, but the lesson remains.
Me:
Yet if his foibles also remain, would he not repeat the same mistakes?
Older Brother:
Not necessarily. Perhaps reincarnation is a gradual process. We do not return as perfect beings, but each life gives us another opportunity to grow.
Me: Do you think Father understood his weaknesses before he died?
Older Brother: I don’t know. Perhaps only partly. Like most people, he may have been too close to his own life to see them clearly.
Me:
And now you imagine him free of all that?
Older Brother:
I hope so. I prefer to think that he is no longer imprisoned by his disappointments.
Me:
Is that why you believe in his reincarnation—because it helps you feel that he has found peace?
Older Brother:
Perhaps. I cannot prove it. But it seems more bearable than thinking that his existence simply ended.
Me:
I understand. I cannot say with confidence what happens after death. But I like the thought that life may offer more mercy than we can see.
Older Brother:
Then you think I may be right?
Me:
You may be. Or Father may continue in some way neither of us can imagine. But even if there is no new life on another star, something of him remains here.
Older Brother:
In our memories?
Me:
Yes, but not only there. He remains in the habits we inherited from him, in the things he taught us, and even in the ways we have tried not to repeat his mistakes.
Older Brother:
So you believe that a person continues through the lives they have influenced.
Me:
At least in that sense, yes. We are partly the result of his life. Even our conversation today is one of the consequences of his having existed.
Older Brother:
Then perhaps there are two kinds of continuation. He may have begun another life elsewhere, while traces of his former life remain with us here.
Me:
I like that thought. Somewhere, he may have forgotten his old unhappiness. Here, we remember him—but perhaps with more understanding and less judgment than we once did.
Older Brother:
After forty-seven years, do you still catch yourself to remember him? I do.
Me:
Time does not make every wound disappear, but it can change the way we hold it.
Older Brother:
If Father really is living again, I hope his new life is happier.
Me:
So do I. And if some deep part of him still carries something from us, I hope it is love rather than sorrow.
Older Brother:
Do you think he would recognize us if we met again?
Me:
Perhaps not with his mind. But if there is something deeper than memory, maybe there would be a feeling of familiarity—something neither side could explain.
And in the end it doesn’t matter whether he remembers us or not. He’s still our father. That isn’t a memory, it’s a fact — nothing on any star can undo it. He could forget my name a thousand times over and I’d still be his son. The remembering was never what made it true.
Older Brother:
As if we had met before.
Me:
Yes. And perhaps that would be enough.
Older Brother:
Then what were you sad about a minute ago?
Me:
I don’t know. Habit, maybe. (pause) And anyway — every existence is a struggle against life. That’s what a life is. Why would we assume the new one is any kinder? We talk as if he’d been promoted. For all we know, he had a poor life which sucked us all in. We have no way of telling whether he’s better off or not now.
Older Brother:
No. We don’t.
Me:
Do you remember him marking those exercise books? He’d be at the table half the night with the stacks of them. Other people’s classes. Other teachers paying him a few dollars to do the work they didn’t want, and their names going on it at the end, never his. A ghost marker. Hundreds of pupils corrected in his hand and not one of them ever knew who it was.
Older Brother:
He was good at it, too. Fast. He’d have made a decent teacher if anyone had let him near a classroom.
Me:
And that was the same man who expected to spend his life behind the counter of a herbal shop.
Brother:
He never expected anything else. That was the whole trouble. The shop was Grandfather’s, and he took it for granted he’d have it — if not the lot of it, then his share, and he’d have settled for the share. He wasn’t greedy. He just assumed. Meanwhile the rest of them were circling it like dogs. Not one of his siblings you’d have trusted with a dollar.
Me:
And then it went under altogether.
Older Brother:
It went under, and there was nothing to inherit and nothing to divide, and he was forty years old with no trade and a family to feed. That’s when it started. The years I said you were too young for.
M: (after a moment)
So — all that. The counter he never stood behind, the brothers, the shop going down, the penury, the exercise books, his name on none of it. Why would anyone carry that forward? If there is another life, what possible use would that weight be to him there? Let him put the whole load down at the door.
Older Brother:
Then let us wish him well, wherever—and whoever—he may now be.
Me:
Yes. May he be free from his former unhappiness. And may we learn to remember him with compassion.
Older Brother:
For him, and for ourselves.
Me:
For all of us.
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