“‘Even now’ she thought, ‘almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Thornton Wilder, ends his book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, on this note. In one hundred and three characters he captures the soul of loss and remembrance; of the truth of the unknown, and the ever-present worry of what will remain when we pass, from this plain to the next; and what –of us– will remain, in a world that is eager to forget.
To take Wilder’s end-thoughts a bit further, I attempt the following body of text;

Leaving to forget, Is like cutting to remember.
There is no strength there;
No solace to be gained.

Pain is the reminder,
That in your heart,
And mind, and soul,
You really did try.
You really did care.

Forgive yourself, today, tomorrow,
Or five years from now, when–
You find it brought up;
In a passing conversation,
That you feel the need to correct,
Or a stolen glance,
That you want to forget.
Don’t leave to forget, but stay to forgive –yourself.

Every semblance of you will leave this plane one day, and there is no monument you can make of yourself, that can withstand the course of entropy; the very thought therein would be absurdity.

Every semblance of you will leave this plane one day, and that is that. No amount of brooding will change that fact. No amount of praying will cater to a pact– between you and the fates, to help you– live.
So live– now, while you still can.

Every semblance of you will leave this plane one day, so learn to allow yourself bad days. Allow yourself the opportunity to fail; because it is an opportunity. An opportunity to learn, to live, and grow; out from the shell that you sparingly know, to live and thus forgive– yourself.