In my old age, I find that my most vivid memories fit into two categories. First there are those so sublime that you can rightly say they are painfully sweet. Almost all of these are from earlier in my life. Gentle, innocent, sweet, just plain happy. They are rich with the sounds, colors and even fragrances of the experience. Of a certain wonderful vacation day with my mom and dad. Of a heavenly day spent with my girlfriend. Of my first glimpse of my firstborn child and oh how beautiful was that little angel's face.
Then there are those memories so sour they are almost crippling. You can never get past the bitterness. They persist like a sentence in hell. Luckily for me most of these happened after childhood. While they hurt, they didn't leave scars like terrible experiences do to children.
It occurs to me that these two extremes of memory are really and truly what heaven and hell are all about. I often wonder if when you die, the last thought in your mind is the one that stays, eternal, replaying itself like and endless loop in your fading consciousness. This would seem like eternity to you because that's all there is. You and your last thought.
If the thought is one of the sublime ones, you are in heaven. If it is one of the others... I pity your endless anguish. Perhaps for some people there is a purgatory of no thoughts or unemotional thoughts. Maybe people who live their lives unemotionally don't have vivid, sweet or horrible torturous memories at all.
Of course, what I consider a good memory may not be another's good memory. While it is difficult for me to believe, I suppose it's possible that for some, a sublime memory is one of doing terrible harm to someone. A child perhaps.
No. This is not plausible. Such a memory would sour over time, hurting can never leave a human mind at peace. Such a mind would soon be in a hell of its own making.
It is with this in mind that I congratulate all who have managed to make it through the obstacle courses of this life armed with good memories. And I pity the others who look back on their lives and see an empty vessel with nothing worth remembering. And nothing to look forward to but an eternity devoid of happiness.
