Be remembered ...

[Graehstone]

Immortality, that’s what they bring us, immortality, our Greys and our words, our dreams and our deeds.
We are a strange breed.
I will wager that most of us also have a love affair with the written word, with either the reading thereof or in the writing of. Some of us write poetry and others daily journals, some of us do it well and others do it … just as well, as long as you write.
Our Greys are our daily recorders, the tellers of our tales, the receptacles of secrets and our “Generation ships”.
We live on in a manner of speaking in our birds, in what we teach them and most importantly in what they took from you along the way as you shared a time together on the path of life. How they chose to remember you.
Just in case, we still write, you just never know, some of these things need to be kept forever and ever … because … of the fear of being forgotten is strong in all those that feel the need to write. We write because we are all little megalomaniacs, with emphasis on the later half of the word, because we all are that small child alone … left behind … beaten … unwanted.
We can all relate and we all have a story to tell. Tell it. Be remembered.
Sing your favorite diddly all the time and have it recorded in your voice for your grand and maybe great grand children to hear and bring a smile long after you are gone.
Put all your poems, you know the ones in the shoebox at the bottom of the closet, way in the back, put them all together into a little booklet.
To the journal writers, think about putting your thoughts into a hardbound book, be so pretentious, Okay so it’s only one book, but it is “Your” book.
Be remembered.
On the days I ask… why?
I run across something special, something that answers all my questions and then some and am humbled again and again.
I will remember this young man from now till the day I die even though he has passed away so long ago and his entire life, his … immortality, is told within the confines of 14 lines consisting of 114 words, forever remembered and treasured.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

~Pilot Officer John McGee

At the beginning of WWII, when America was still "neutral" John Gillespie McGee Jr., went to Canada to volunteer to fly in the RCAF. He was trained, activated and sent to England to serve in the newly formed 412th Fighter Squadron. While flying over France, fighting the German Luftwaffe for England, on September 3, 1941, he wrote the first part of this poem at 30,000 feet. He finished it soon after he landed and sent it to his family back in the States. Just three and a half months later, on December 11th, 1941, at the age of 19, he was shot down and killed.

No matter how trivial it may seem nor how small, write it down, your life is a treasure, share it, even if it hurts, especially if it hurts, be remembered, even if it’s only for 114 words.