“Everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?”
I am a meat puppet wrapped for a brief time around a ghost, dragged from one point to another by forces beyond my control.
Afterward? I do not care what Homer says, that songs bring immortality. We are, when we are gone, only imperfectly recollected dust. One must not dwell on this.
Even before death, we die many times, little unmarked farewells, things that will simply never be seen or done by us again, words that will never be linked with our names another time, though we do not notice their departing until after they are absent: reverence, duty, honor.