Memorial Nonsense

And it came to pass yours truly was informed – by looking at a poster – of the existence of “memorial gardens”.

I have looked in some search engine what it is, and it soon became clear enough: a memorial garden is a place where people go to remember their loved ones who have left this vale of tears. With some space for them, perhaps a plaque on it, perhaps some ashes. What is, then, the difference with a Cemetery?

I can only imagine one difference: a memorial garden is something absolutely a-religious. In short, something for atheists.

A cemetery, you see, is full of crosses. One is constantly reminded of the great hope of a better life awaiting, one day, those who have departed this world. How annoying must it be to the mind of the atheist, who hates to be reminded that there is a judgment, and one without appeal!

Let him, therefore, do something different, and travel on a Saturday morning – Sunday is, clearly, meant for grocery shopping – in a pleasant garden, where his beloved former partner or parent or relative will be thought of in a soothing, pleasant, utterly relaxing environment. Thus pleasing first, second and last the one who does the thinking.

These atheists are, I am told, exactly those who consider Christians people who believe in fairy tales.

Strange.

A believer can walk in a cemetery, look at the immensity of the sky above him, at the organised beauty of life unfolding under his eyes, and rationally understand the necessity of the existence of God. What he sees above, and what he knows of the above, is what makes sense of the tombs and monuments around him. A cemetery is not the parody of anything else. It is the real thing, and it truly makes sense.

The atheist is, on the other hand, supposed to be a rational man. Still, not only he refuses to see what every perceptive child understands – that such a huge and hugely organised universe must have a Great Chief In Charge – but he lacks the guts to look at the consequences of his conviction against the faith. He needs some balm for the coldness around him: therefore, he builds for himself a senseless parody of a cemetery, deprived of any logic but his own self delusion.

Look, atheist friend. You believe that your parents are gone. Either they were burned in an oven like they do with waste, or they were put under the earth for worms to go to work at them. In both cases, what they have become is, pretty much, fertiliser. And yes, that's that, folks.

What sense does it make, then, to have a “memorial garden?”. Wouldn't any old nice park do the same? And what use is this revelling on the atrocious reality of the atheist? Fertiliser them, and fertiliser him, at the end of a life that makes no sense at all and is the very epitome of mad, or rather blind, casual injustice. Feelings of filial or parental love which, as the atheist must recognise, are but evolutionary mechanisms the human species, as every other halfway complex animal, evolved to protect itself from an hostile environment. Feeling of sadness for their departure which, as the atheist must recognise, are also but the way The Great Mad Life Machine, which actually – he must recognise it – doesn't even exist, forces him to love others and spend money on them; money which could, otherwise, be spent on gambling, drinking and whoring without the shadow of even an uncomfortable moment.

“This is my business”, says the atheist. “If I enjoy walking around in a memorial garden, what's it to you?”

It is a lot to me, dear peripatetic atheist. It shows that you, who claim the command of logical thinking, are but an emotional child, lost in a big world you cannot even begin to understand, and terrified of it; a world you cannot bear without surrounding yourself with exactly the soothing feelings and pleasant lies of which you say Christians and other believers are the willing, gullible victims. You are looking for pleasant feelings, because you are afraid of the unpleasant truth: that you will die and end up in an oven, or as worm food, and nothing of what you have said or done, alone or in company, for or against Christianity, good or bad, useful or useless, has, or ever could have, any meaning at all. Any meaning, I mean, that does not come from the fantasies of a child, fancying he loves a world which will devour him without a shred of an emotion.

Your mother is ashes now. So is everyone you knew before you discovered you wanted to be the Great Decider yourself, answerable to none but you. And all this does not make any sense, there is no glory or beauty in any of it. Your mother loved and nurtured you out of the pure instinct of making litter until she died, like every other animal. Your love for her is due to the same mechanisms. No one is ever good or right, or even heroic and selfless. Nature has made it all. All your hopes and aspirations, your passions and loves, your oh so humanitarian desires show only one thing: you are duped; you are the slave of your own DNA, used by it for the sake of its own perpetuation as you get discarded and thrown in the compost. This is all you will ever be good for.

Therefore, my dear atheist, abandon this emotional and childish nonsense of the “memorial garden”. It is, in your perspective, as senseless as everything else. Reflect, rather, on your own utter nothingness: an absurd joke of coincidence living among other jokes of coincidence, and living a short existence towards the pure nothing as they search some small comfort, and try to reproduce for reasons they actually can't fathom (which is why they, in fact, contracept massively).

It is better for you to recognise the brutal reality that dominates your thinking: you are the slave of your DNA until the day you die.

At which point, you will be only useful as fertiliser.

M