Videos of The Dead

In a tower of tapes, only one contains his moving image. All the rest are hours of HBO and some light porn. But in this brief, one-way encounter, so much is captured. Mannerisms, gestures, familiar, idiosyncratic habits of a life. How he wears sunglasses and chews gum, in a flannel shirt, below deck, taking measurments and plotting the tugboat course. It was a sunny winter's day. 1988. He was so alive, the way we are alive, with nothing but time ahead and ocean all around. Seeing it this way, is the memory of him diminished? Should we not indulge our necrovoyerism? To love looking upon a face and laugh again with his antics. Should we all be taped all the time, for future generations to cherish and be reminded? How can such vital animation end and what are we supposed to do with what remains? I miss all of them. Loss, loss, a slow expected stream of grief and suffering over a lifetime; they will never know how much they visit us. Why?