One single memory into the Afterlife [TM challenge]

[.livejournal.com]

If you could only carry one memory with you into the afterlife, which would you choose?

You cannot distinguish clearly between memories.... they are all tightly connected into one long continous string, from the day we're born till the day we die. Yes, of course you can take out a piece of those memories, a fragment, but it would always be incomplete, without context.

And a memory without context is like a line without meaning, food without taste. If you do not remember what came before, and what came after, it loses the value you initially put into it. So, you cannot take only one single memory with you into your afterlife, because when you then look at it, you would always wonder...

Why? When? Who?

You sit back with a single facet... a moment in time, a time that is no more and of which you have no recollection.

And you would end up hating that facet, since it would remind you of the things you have lost and can never regain.

I wouldn't bring any memory into my afterlife.

Muse: Severus Snape
Fandom: Harry Potter
Wordcount: 165

Comments

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

Don't you have any nice memories then?

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have many nice memories, make no mistake. I just think memories are best enjoyed while they still have a meaning, while I still have something to connect them to.

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

Because they are not the same when you look back at them? You twist them to suit yourself?

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

I think you are misunderstanding me.

They remain the same, but if it's only a singular moment, and you don't have the memories that are connected to it, that explain why you reached that point - be it wonderful or horrible or just interesting - it's only a picture without connotations.

Would for example, a memory of the moment you fell in love be the same if you did not have the memory of meeting the person? Of getting to know her or him? Of sharing the first kiss? Or the last...

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

Oh, *nods slowly*

I understand now, one point in time is not good enough if you can not say how you got there.

*smiles*

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

It may be for others, I can only speak for myself.

If I really had to choose a single memory, if would be a sensory memory...

But then again, how to choose between so many pleasurable sensations?

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

*blushes, looking at her feet*
Indeed.

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

*arches eyebrow slightly at the blushing*

Did you choose a memory? Or are you, as a goddess, above such mortal issues as an afterlife?

Or have you perhaps considered the question in a rhetorical sense, simply for the sake of the exercise?

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

I haven't choosen on yet, I have a lot of time to sift through, we all can die, one way or another, but we can come back from the underworld.

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, of course.

I have wondered about one thing though.

Should you die by some unfortunate event, would you stay in possession of your memories both in the Underworld and upon your return to the land of the living?

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tell you, I haven't died.

I am guessing once you are dead you do not remember, but I cannot say.

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

*nods but looks speculative*

You have never met anybody who has died and then returned from the Underworld?

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

*bites lip, looking down*

I have been away from the gods for an age or more.

[sev-ensnared.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see.

May I ask why?

[tru-calling.livejournal.com]

I fell in love with my best friend and couldn't watch him and his conquests