"The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into a mere musical note or phrase suggestive of his singularity--happy are those whose singularity gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a dimunition and abridgement."
William James
photo: "Ancestor Portrait Mask" by John Marston (Coast Salish) at Inuit Gallery.
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