I too have been thinking a lot about death as of late. Given the events which have recently come into my life, it is only natural that I would ponder upon it once more. Indeed, this is not the first time I have thought about the concept of death--that time came two years ago, on June 25, 2009. That was the first time I ever had to deal with a permanent and definite loss, when we lost he who holds our hearts. Back then, there was so much still left to do, as you bring up in your original post. There was the mystery shrouding the circumstances of his death--the who's, the what's, the where's, the when's, and most importantly, the why's and how's of it all. In other words, it was an active period--yes, Michael was gone, and that loss hit us all like a tidal wave. It was the shock of the decade for sure, at the very least for us, it was. Not only did the world lose one of the greatest musicians to have ever graced a stage, but we lost a part of our hearts. Yet, even whilst dealing with all the natural parts of grief, we were active, and we continue to be active--there was This is It, there was the will, there was the Michael album and the debate over whether the songs were tampered with, there was the battle over the auditorium, and now, there is the final event...the trial of the assassin, the one who snatched him from our grasp forever. What will become of him, we ask, in our final stages of activism--will he walk, or will he pay? Will any punishment ever suffice? It is the bittersweet symphony of justice--in that consequence is served, but not without great and heavy losses.
Yet our question, the real question, the only question is...where will we go from there. As xthunderx2 puts it, what will we have left? This is the question everyone asks after the events have come to pass, in any and every loss. After the funeral, after the trial, after everyone has given their condolences and moved on with their life...what will the bereaved do? Will anyone ever truly comprehend? It feels like such a lonely place, despite the universality of the experience. There is no feeling that quite matches the emptiness of loss--the utter paralysis of it. It could be compared to living in empty space, where no one seems to comprehend the desperation behind your screaming. That's just the beginning.
However, the gears of time will move even our own lives, so that we are forced to move on and continue with our own existence, or else crumble under the strain that the loss has caused. This is biology doing its work--to adapt to change, and to survive, is the ultimate human will. Yet...we're never the same when we survive. During the period of passive mourning, even more questions are raised, and worse yet--the anger turns to fear. During our active mourning, we were angry--as a group, we were united in our anger towards the situation, towards those who took advantage of Michael, towards Murray whose utter incompetence and criminality killed our beloved. Then, it seems, our voices truly did echo as one, then, we needed to fight against A, B, and C. It was group thinking with a clear and definite purpose.
After the trial, however, we will enter a more passive stage of mourning, perhaps the most difficult of them all. The anger which united us during our active stage will turn into a fear, which many of us can already sense approaching in the back of our minds. The fear, of course, is....will the world forget the person we lost? Will living on now be as though they had never existed? Are they reduced to being remembered only during 'important' dates of the year, such as birth and death days? We know that we will love them until the day we die, but the world at large certainly won't, and this is the hardest thing to face. It is, however, the truth--whether it be Michael Jackson, or somebody's relative, the fact of the matter is that the world will rid itself of their memory over time, perhaps not fully, but to such a degree that they are only brought up when relevant [aka historical figures reduced to being remembered only in an obscure history lesson.] This is inevitable in the external world...in that world which houses you and I and everyone else...in that world we cannot control, which changes at every moment. Someone is born and someone fades, every day, at every hour. We are forever in perpetual motion, moving at such speeds that we must, in a way, forsake the old, so as to welcome the new. This is observed in every era, throughout our human history. However, our will to hold on to certain things, at least for a while, creates everything we've had. All of our greatest achievements are an attempt at eternity, because there is nothing humans hate more than the thought and realization of their own mortality. History, photography, painting, record-keeping, everything in an attempt to immortalize a moment, to create illusory eternity, to look away from the very real concept of death, so that an instant can be made to last forever by 'freezing' it in time. It never changes. So that, ironically, we too are foolishly resistant to change, despite the ultimate knowledge that it will win that battle.
We will change, we are changing, we will grow old, and we will die, as all things before us have done, and all things after us will do. We will fade away, even the most splendid and brilliant among us, because everything dies. This is what I thought about then, this is what I think about now. I am preoccupied with the concept of death, the human realization and resistance of it, the futility of it all.
I have reached the conclusion that we have naught left to do but accept that, someday, Michael will fade. He won't be completely forgotten, because we strive to conserve important things for as long as humanly possible, an endeavour facilitated by technology such as the Internet. However, he will fade from the present sphere of existence, from the minds of the people of the world at large, from the television screens and movie theatres. But he will never fade from our memories, or from our hearts, and this is the most important thing to keep in mind. His importance to us as individuals and as members of a group is something that time cannot change, because he impacted us in such a powerful way that the mind will not ever forget. Those who are able to forget quickly, are those whose lives were impacted the least, or perhaps not at all, by the person who has passed. However, the hearts and minds that person touched will always remember the experience and the memories, until it is their own time to pass on, and be forgotten by the world at large as well.
To make my long, confusing, non-sensical ramble short: yes, the world at large will forget him over time, but we never will, so long as we have our memories, so long as we have each other, he will live on with us until the day we die.
Edit: An interesting detail, this entire concept is actually what my signature seeks to illustrate.
~*A flash and it's born, a flash and it fades. Born and then gone like us all.
A flash and it's born. A flash, and it fades. Born and then gone just like my star...*~
