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This past week I spent 90 minutes of my life watching one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen, “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium”. Have you ever sat down and started watching something and although it wasn’t entertaining or exciting in any way, you just kept watching it? Sometimes amusement comes TOO easily. Anyways…once the end of this movie comes around, this scene takes place and Mr. Magorium has this grand exit saying:
“When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written ‘He dies’. That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is ‘He dies’. It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with ‘He dies’. And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words ‘He dies’, but because of the life we saw prior to the words.”
“He dies”. That’s it. Although I have never read remotely anything close to Shakespeare, I really got a grasp on this. From every book I’ve read that carries a story with one of the main characters dying, they give this triumphant exit, describing every movement, every word from the character. They describe the setting in extreme detail down to the most obscure of points. And for what? To give people the closest feeling they possibly can get to actually being there in person watching it happen?
Unfortunately more of the same is true for reality. When the moment comes that you see someone pass or that you hear that a family member or close friend has died, more times than none you remember where you were, what you were doing and other small details around you at that exact moment. In a way, dwelling on the moment that Shakespeare sums up as the two words, “He dies”.
Death is a mysterious thing. No one knows what is to come, or if anything is to come once it happens. We are all titled to what we believe in and what we believe is to happen once our time comes. No one knows when it comes, no one knows how it will happen. It, many times, brings tragedy, but in many other instances brings complete euphoria. We all have our own ways of dealing with the passing of people around us, and this grasp that I got on these two simple words speaks so much on the matter.
Why should Shakespeare (or anyone else for that matter) sit on the death of someone by describing it through several pages? “He dies” is all it takes. Who would ever want to be remembered for the way they died and not for what they accomplished in life? When someone reads “He dies” in a piece of literature, probably the first thing that comes to mind is, “That’s it? No big ending? Or finale?” Unfortunately it’s not the most stunning work, but it’s the best that can be written.
The achievements in a person’s life can put anything into perspective for even a complete stranger to understand. It’s how we interact with each other, through personality, materialistic style or human moral. Ultimately, it’s what Shakespeare wanted all along, for the reader to not remember the death, but to remember the person that death happened to.
Life is a beautiful thing. I could easily get all mushy with the details, but I’ll refrain from that. Yet, what a person’s life can entail can be filled with stories you could never believe. The great thing about every story is that they’re all different. Every single story has a different point of view describing the wonder of time and what happened during it. It gives new meaning to each person who walks this Earth. Now, no one said every story was the most interesting out of the box, but to those who knew the one who passed, those stories mean that much more regardless of the “entertainment level”. It’s reminiscing of the pages before the final two words, “He dies”…the beauty of history and of life itself. No one remembered George Washington for his death and no one remembered Rosa Parks for hers. Neither should anyone else, but rather they should be celebrated for what they had done prior to that fact.
So when someone asks what became of a certain person, relate their life in all its wonder, and end it with a simple and modest, they died. And even though it is completely normal to feel saddened by the loss of someone, don’t feel it because of the words "He dies”, but because of the life we saw prior to the words.
Now if all my golden moments could be rolled into one,
They would shine just like the sun for a summer day.
And after it was over, we could have it back again.
With credit to the editor for striking out the rain very clean.
And all it really needed was the proper point of view.
No one's gonna bring me down, no one's gonna stop me now.
Now I gathered up my sorrows and I sold them all for gold,
and I gathered up the gold and I threw it all away.
It all went for a good time and a song, come on.
The laughter was like music, it did float my soul along for a while.
And all it really needed was the proper point of view.
No one's gonna reach me here, no one's gonna know I'm gone.
You may think I might be crazy and I guess you might be right,
but I know the way I feel today is out of sight.
I do not trust your senses to remember your name.
Without corrective lenses, things are never twice the same anyway.
And all it really needed was the proper point of view.
No one's gonna bring me down, no one's gonna stop me now.
No one's gonna reach me here, no one's gonna know I'm gone.
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