We do not die completely when we are known, truly loved and known.
It is an act of love and respect to be known in memory, to be held in memory, to have one’s memory in safe hands, to live on in memory.
Grief is an act of love. Living with grief is an act of love. To hold someone in your memory for years and ages is an act of love.
Do you ever worry about what will last of you once you are dead, once it is out of your hands? Do you ever worry about your knowledge and memory being discredited, to be gaslit?
It’s tragic if the only one keeping memory of you are abusers, people who not only don’t know you but also twist and use information about you. May no abuser lay claim to your memory — should be a saying, a goal, an act of love.
No one deserves to live with abuse, no one deserves to die with abuse, no one deserves to be “known” to abusers, to have abusers think they know one and lay claim to one’s memory.
To be unknown is a second death. To be thought known by abusers who claim one’s memory is a second dying, perhaps a second killing.
Perhaps, when we talk of the mortifying ordeal of being known, we also mean being afraid of being or becoming “known” to abusers, of people who think they know one but don’t and lay claim to that regardless, who harm the memory of one or twist it to their liking.
Perhaps, we also mean to say: Please hold me in memory for a little while after I’m gone. For some love and kindness for me to live on after I’m gone. Please hold on to what is true of me. Please hold on to the true me. Please (continue to) know me.
