How much of the past should we forget?
Is it weakness or bitterness to remember?
Does the death of many at once bring us regret?
Is it painful or vengeful to remember?
Do we have a morbid attachment to the past?
to that deep loss that defines us at last?
Our lives always seem to be full of questions.
In time, to some, we find answers,
For others, we keep asking the same questions,
Praying, somehow, somewhere, we find answers.
But many questions in this life do not matter,
And so, a begging go the answers.
But dissatisfied, we have to ask again.
Why does this one matter at all?
Why should we ask if, or why?
Why have a memorial for anything at all?
And why should this memorial make us nervous?
To borrow a phrase from the Memory of Sassoon,
maybe death has made us wise and bitter and strong;
and we are rich in all that we have lost.
Or perhaps as the Man Soyinka observed;
“The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny”.
In white, always remember where you have been.
Honour the death of those who were there.
For that is who you are, and what you have seen.
And then raise a cenotaph to the memory you bear.
Uche Nwokedi SAN, KSS
0 Comments