Where Do the Good Times of the Past Go?

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Coming to terms with the death of someone you love is hard enough. You're pulled into that heart wrenching, soul crushing blackhole they call grief. I'm still navigating through my grief over the loss of my dear sweet wife, Jane.

In addition to losing the love of my life, however, it's recently dawned on me that much more has been lost as well. I lost those happy times and sweet moments that we had together.

Of course I have my memories and photos and a few other mementos of our life, everyone has those. What I'm getting at is deeper than remembrances, which of course I cherish.

But what, I wonder, has ultimately happened to those fabulous times of the past? Where did they go? Have they been saved somewhere?

Or have they completely vaporized, such as puffs of smoke, disappearing forever into the ethos? Is it like the steam from boiling water which dissipates into nothingness once the heat is gone?

I don't quite know how to express the loss I'm writing about here. It's a loss of human energy, I suppose.

The loss of all those feelings we had as a loving couple. The loss of the laughter, the loss of the emotions, the loss of the sweet moments and the loss of even the highly charged down times.

Where does all that spent energy go? For me, it is hard to believe that all those years of love, dreams, laughter, tears, and millions of emotions have simply gone to oblivion. As if they never were here at all.

Just think of all the people who have ever lived who are now physically gone. The bodies decompose, go back to the earth. Those of us who are religious or spiritual take some comfort in the belief that although the bodies of our loved ones are no longer with us, their souls continue to survive, their essence lives on, in a different way, in a different place.

If the souls continue to exist, why shouldn't all the emotion, love, thoughts, dreams and ideas that those people produced when they were alive also continue to exist? Why should all that fabulous energy disappear into nothingness? It would be such a waste.

The greatest thinkers, artists, musicians, writers, scientists, philosophers, dreamers, statesmen, and the billions of others who may not be famous, but nevertheless generated their own energy into our world, is all that human energy gone forever? Every idea, every thought, every tear, every laugh, has all that been wiped away?

We are taught that we're never truly dead if there is someone still living who remembers us. Our memory lives on with those who survive us.

Lovely thoughts, except for one thing.

At some point in the future there will be no one left alive who actually knew us.

So unless our lives happened to be so important to posterity (Abraham Lincoln, to name one example) we will eventually have no one left to remember us. And all that we did during our lifetime will be forgotten too.

Just as we find solace in the thought that someday we will be united with our loved ones, together again for all time, I think it would be wonderful if all that energy we expended while on this earth; those loving emotions, beautiful experiences, fanciful ideas, and sweet moments continue to exist somewhere for all time as well.

Perhaps it does. Maybe the good times of the past live on, existing within the souls of our loved ones.

Because, after all, what is the point of souls which are devoid of their intrinsic essence? Is it not those emotions, feelings, senses, and characteristics that make a soul a soul? Without those basic ingredients, it seems to me, there cannot be a soul.

I believe Jane's soul is filled with all those things that went in to making her the beautiful person that she was. And at some future time when we will be together again, those beautiful times of the past will have not gone away at all.

Not at all.

They will be with us, living forever within our souls.

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