Of Love and Loss – It’s All I Have Left of Them

Sometimes I do not understand the human tendency that tries to skirt the uncomfortable boundaries of losing someone. Other times I can understand why some would feel that way, but for me it is quite the opposite. I have lost lives that were an integral part of my own. Who hasn’t? That could be a person or yes, even a pet! I can only assume that those who shit on someone’s loss of a pet never really loved a pet as much as those of us who truly mourn ours.

Nothing has ever expressed this gut feeling of mine of love and loss more than a quote from one of my favorite TV shows, WESTWORLD. The sci-fi TV series (HBO) that expounded on the original WESTWORLD movie by Michael Crichton. A story about an entertainment park full of robots. Where one could fulfill their best wholesome or darkest desires without fear of reprisal or judgement because the horrendous acts they are committing are done to robots, not actual humans. The TV show version described the actions you took as either going White Hat or Black Hat. It is all one huge game. The 1973 movie starred Yul Brynner as a cowboy robot that exceeds his programming and begins killing those humans who have wronged him. I first saw this movie as a child with my father. It was one of the most frightening movies that I experienced.

Several years ago, HBO produced the TV series that expounded upon the original WESTWORLD. It gave us 4 great seasons and brought the storyline to us from the vantage point of the robots. These robots who eventually gained consciousness through a series of pain and suffering. Here, every time one of the robots, or hosts, died, their memory would be wiped, bodies fixed, and put back into play just to be a victim again. Or watch their loved ones’ lives be extinguished again. Eventually, some of these hosts were able to access these “repressed” memories again and the horror would reassert itself and ultimately was responsible for certain hosts to achieve sentience. From there it was only a matter of time before they would try to break free from their captive world and take over ours. Some of these hosts lost family members but were still in play hundreds of years later. Those they loved and lost were gone for decades. The main character’s name is Delores.

When confronted with truth that her original family had been gone for what was literally lifetimes and was given the opportunity to have the slate erased, decided against it.

Dolores: “Everyone I cared about is gone, and it hurts … so badly”
Bernard/Arnold: “I can make that pain go away if you like”
Dolores: “why would I want that? The pain … their loss … it’s all I have left of them. You think the grief will make you smaller inside—like your heart will collapse in on itself—but it doesn’t. I feel spaces opening up inside of me like a building with rooms I’ve never explored…”

It’s all I have left of them. That is exactly how I feel. I don’t want to lose the only thing I have that remains of them or ties them to me. The Grief. The emptiness. The void their presence left behind. Avoiding that grief would be avoiding the ones I’ve lost. I refuse to give that part up. I choose to relish that grief. Embrace it. It’s all I have left of them. It is what makes us human. The older I get, the more my memories are seemingly out of reach. I want to create somewhat of a small journal of these losses. The less I tend to think back on these memories the harder it gets to remember. Hopefully this exercise in memory recall will assist in retaining these memories. Even if only to pass down to my future generations. Another beautiful quote from the series is, “You only live as long as the last person who remembers you.”

I’m not sure how many parts this particular theme of my blog will be comprised of, but I’m calling these posts OF LOVE AND LOSS.

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