Saturday, June 23, 2007

Immortality

In recent years we have come a little closer to showing we can be immortal in a very broad sense. Scientifically it would seem the little bundles of chemicals that make up our DNA and genes do not get destroyed but survive in our relations and offspring - even in other species - for long ages or even forever. That is a sort of unconscious immortality, and in theory we could one day be reassembled. It is also interesting to note that clones will have their own separate distinct consciousness, but even so that will not enable them to know the thoughts of the other clone! Neverthless this is a real departure from the past when we supposed that we would be entirely annihalated.

Emotionally in old age I have come to realise that we survive in other ways too. One of my wife's remarkably intelligent grandsons has attached himself to me, and he has shown a most remarkable care, sweetness and consideration for me. When he sees me busy, he will say "let me do it", and I do. At the age of three, he will appear without being asked with a glass of iced water for me, and recently in the evening on my arrival from work, he immediately asks if I want a cup of coffee, which he also makes all by himself from a packet of powder and hot water. He now feeds the dogs and mixes their biscuits and meat in a very business like way. He likes to be picked up, and will demand my using two arms rather than one.
He likes to sit with me and start-up my laptop. "I want to sit with you". "Where"."On your lap". "Why". "Because I love you", he says. "I don't like you going to work" he says "I miss you". Well, yes! He has some tantrums when I won't pick him up.
He tugs at my heart strings and he is a little angel for my old age. For the first time in my life I am alarmed that I may not be around for much longer and my concern is all for him and not for me. Most of us cannot remember much from before the age of five, and so it is quite possible that he will never remember me. There might have been a time when that would have worried me, but now I see very clearly that what I am giving him will be a foundation for the rest of his life - whether he remembers me or not.
And perhaps in seventy years time, he will unconciously take one of his own grandchildren - or someone else's - on his knee and pass on advice of how to live a good life for another generation. If I leave soon - as I will have to - I must shuffle off quietly, leaving him happy with his prospects in a changing world.

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