Snapshots in time distil every ‘wild and precious life’

What do we leave behind? The poets and sages make short shrift of any human conceit on that score.

Marcus Aurelius noted two millennia ago how close the time was, for all mortals, “when all will forget you.” Yeats mocked even the builders of great monuments for failing to recognize time’s “levelling wind.”

In the end, it is not our entire lives that are recalled, but snapshots of moments that, for as long as we are spoken of, reveal our aptitudes, interests, acts. Our spirit.

“Love the human race,” Marcus Aurelius advised. And it sounds like Robert Reid of Toronto did.

Reid, who died at 92 last month of COVID-19, was admired for his open mind and generosity, a hospital volunteer after retiring from Bell Canada who happily took to smartphones.

He signed off his text messages, his family said, with his favourite emojis — “the four-leaf clover, a thumbs up, happy face, rainbow or a heart.”

The poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “May I never not be frisky. May I never not be risqué.”

Whether or not Bernice Fiala, who died last month at 80 in Chatham, ever read Oliver, she understood the sentiment. The avid Montreal Canadiens fan fulfilled a lifelong dream for her 80th birthday by riding a motorcycle.

The Roman orator Cicero said that a passion for learning should grow as the years go by. As with George P. Dimitroff, who died at 69 in Peterborough last month.

Dimitroff was a school board psychologist who, after retiring in 2012, took up the camera and joined the local photographic society.

He was married for 45 years to wife Sheila and loved playing with his grandkids and looking after his brood, his family said.

Once, he emailed a reminder to his three kids before a big snowstorm to fill up on windshield washer, accidentally copying every school psychologist in Ontario: “Everyone emailed back a thanks for the concern and the reminder.”

Marcus Aurelius said that “it is a special characteristic of man to love even those who stumble.” The family of Manuel Marques, who died in Pickering at 93 in April, lived the sentiment as a gentle soul who always gave others a second chance, his family said.

“I never, ever heard him speak ill of anyone,” said daughter Linda Cottrell.

Sometimes, said Cicero, “old age is more spirited and full of courage than youth.” As in the life of Foon Hay Lum, who died of COVID-19 as one of Canada’s oldest women at age 111 in Toronto.

Lum lived independently until she was 107. As a younger woman, she was separated from her husband for more than 30 years because of Canada’s ban on Chinese immigration and worked for 20 years for redress. She was on hand in the Commons in 2006 when then prime minister Stephen Harper formally apologized.

Everyone should have such a courageous answer to Mary Oliver’s simple question.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”