Gone But Not Forgotten

It's been a year, to the day. I lost a friend of mine I went to high school with to a driver who wasn't paying attention. Throughout high school, we had the majority of classes together. All of our AP classes like Calculus and English and even Orchestra. And we clashed. If I said Shakespeare was English, he would argue he was Italian. And if he said that we only used 25% of our brains, I had to counter with my own claim. We especially disagreed about religion which led to arguments that I'm not proud of. And now he's gone. But is he really? His Facebook page is incredibly active with all of his friends and classmates continually leaving him messages.

It's been two and a half years since I lost my uncle, my hero. But he will never be truly gone for me. He's in everything I do, in every Marine I see, in my grandparents farm, in my career decision, and he is one of the men I compare dates to. 

I share this because of some thoughts prompted by Kurt Witt's "Silly delete key" post on Sept 7th. When we delete something, is it really gone? Just because a word never appears on the screen or in our essay,  it doesn't mean we didn't consider it, that we didn't type it then erase it. Ideas and theories come and go; we constantly create new technologies and then replace them with newer things only weeks or months later. But the old ideas and inventions still exist, even if only in theory. There is no delete key in life, no "take back's", or redo's. Thoughts, once shared, are forever out in the pool of collective thought.

On Saturday, we will mark the 9th anniversary of 9/11. The Twin Towers no longer stand in the heart of New York City, but they did once. The hundreds of people that lost their lives that day may no longer take the subway to work every morning, but they are still influencing us today. These losses, these "old" ideas--they don't just fade away. They become part of us, making us better, reminding us to take them with us into the future.