Author’s notes for "In Memoriam"

This is loosely based on two personal experiences.

I was the one who crossed a name off a list. Or more precisely, I erased a name from an appointment book. Many years ago I was a dental assistant and took a call at the desk of my dental office, someone wanting an appointment. The time they asked for was filled, but I knew the person had recently died and so offered them the time slot, erasing the one name to write the new one in while still on the phone. It was after I hung up that a weight fell upon me - is that what happens? We just get erased from appointment books with barely a thought? The man whose name I erased had been a Dearborn police officer who had just a few weeks before been killed in the line of duty. The chill of this has never left me.

This summer (2005) my daughter and I took a trip to England and Scotland. While there we visited the Glasgow Necropolis. The Necropolis is a huge cemetery that opened in 1833. It was part of a movement, at that time, that spread throughout the western world to make cemeteries a more pleasant place to bury the dead, especially a city’s well to do. The layout was sprawling and park-like with the idea being that people could come to contemplate life and death and what we do with each. But time has passed and the humble markers and the mighty tombs show the passing of time in a city that was once very polluted, as well as the lack of respect shown by the young. Headstones here and there are knocked over, tombs are damaged and bear graffiti, statues are missing and assumed stolen. Even in what was once a "showcase" cemetery there are graves that can no longer be read for the above reasons, and people that, though their stones can be read, no one knows who they were.

This story is literally in memoriam. It is dedicated to all the dead through all our long ages; those who are remembered still and those long forgotten by mortal men.