Lost Tomorrows

It’s been a few days since the visit.

Some family friends and I had the chance to see a traveling exhibit of relics from Pompeii. I wanted to get a glimpse of the daily life of those old Romans, and they graciously made a family day of it with me.

I’m sure I bored them silly, geeking out over cookpots and fishhooks and the minutiae of daily life in first century Italy. Look at those glass jars – and a plumbing fixture with shutoff valves! So much looked familiar – something that could have been pulled out of granny’s attic last week. Or my own kitchen cabinet, for that matter.

Every station seemed more fascinating that the last – not just an earthenware oven, but carbonized bread. A big jar with written script extolling the virtues of the garum inside – and some of the remains of the fish sauce itself!

So long as flash was off, we were allowed to take pictures, so I was constantly craning this way and that over the exhibits, trying to capture some little detail of construction.

So much to see! I was having the time of my life…

… until the body cast room.

You’ve all heard the story time and again I’m sure – the town is blanketed in ash, enveloping the bodies of those unfortunates still in the city. Eventually the bodies decayed, and millennia later as the town is excavated the voids they left behind are filled with plaster.

I’d originally intended to take a picture or two there as well. Who knew what detail I might want to capture?

…. but walking into that room, seeing them arranged about – I suddenly realized how self-absorbed and shallow I’d been.

…

It’s one thing to see those images in books. They have a gory fascination, but ultimately they’re just photographs of lumps of plaster. They could be morbid statues, the kind of fake horror we see all the time on the screen.

In person?

In person, you come face to face with another human being. The details of their expression are mercifully obscured, but some piece of their essence remains. The form of their body, the space they inhabited – even just the simple knowledge that you are looking at human remains come as a cold slap.

Here is a man, huddled against a corner. He’s pulled his knees up to his chest, and is covering his mouth and nose from the ash. There is a young girl, her dress pulled up about her waist as she struggles for air through its hem. A child lies still. A couple lie huddled together on the floor of their home.

As you stand in that room, you are overwhelmed with heartbreak. The lost dreams of dozens of human beings surround you, all snapshotted in the instant their tomorrows were cut away from them. An aching air of mournfulness pulls heavy on your soul.

It was the girl, I think, that kept catching my eye. It’s one thing to meet death as an adult, holding the hand of your beloved. You’ve some life behind you, some contentment and perspective. If you’ve seen enough, some of your days may even by tinged with world-weariness already. Or perhaps as a young child, when all is fear and storms and incomprehensible noise.

But little puella.

I remember the fears of that age. When you’re just old enough to taste what adult life means, and you begin to ache for all the joy and sorrow your older sisters have gossiped about. More than anything, you want to step into that grown up world, and some nagging part of you is afraid you might not see it.

Almost always, it’s just one of the shallow anxieties of growing up, soon forgotten in the dance of living.

… almost always.
poor thing.
Bless you all, my friends.
May your life be one you can leave without regret.