Keeping Death

Do not seek to keep death; do not detain it. Give it back to itself, death – release it, let it turn back to itself – that it appeared in life is no reason to keep it there. Let it fall back to wherever death goes. And doesn’t it fall back in you, too – don’t you know death’s retreat in your own body and in the struggle of your body against death?

Your own body – but in that moment, it is not yours. That’s how you know it, death: in the body that turns against you and will not do as it is required. But that is also how you do not know it – for in this turning, it also turns itself from memory, from the power of recollection. Death keeps itself, but it does not keep memory of itself.

Death is forgetting; death forgets. Nothing lasts of it, it has no legacy. Who is present to remember? Who remembers in your tirednesses, your exhaustions? Who keeps death’s place? And yet dying leaves traces of itself. Traces, remnants, so does death indicate itself in life and non-knowing in what is known. But what is left will not be kept; what is remembered must be given to forgetting. It gives itself thus – it is given as it withdraws, as that giving-withdrawal whose face is never met.

Forgetting will not face us – this is sadness. Death is without death; it has no hold on itself. Death is not yet itself – first of all, it wanders. First of all, errancy in life, and it is thus that it seems to call for mercy.

Pity it. Keep a place at the table for the one who cannot come. Keep it for the one who comes as dispersal. Keep a place in your soul for what is without place – keep it in your tirednesses and your exhaustions. Your body knows as you do not. It is known, even as you do not know.

Dying – is that a name for the soul? Forgetting: is that the soul’s name?