Forevers

These 5000 year old skeletons were found embracing in Italy just south of Verona, the place where Shakespeare set "Romeo and Juliet." They are young, according to their teeth, and most likely a man and a woman, or rather, a boy and a girl.

"Luca Bondioli, an anthropologist at Rome's National Prehistoric and Ethnographic Museum, said double prehistoric burials are rare — especially in such a pose — but some have been found holding hands or having other contact.

The find has "more of an emotional than a scientific value." But it does highlight how the relationship people have with each other and with death has not changed much from the period in which humanity first settled in villages and learning to farm and tame animals, he said.

"The Neolithic is a very formative period for our society," he said. "It was when the roots of our religious sentiment were formed."

The two bodies, which cuddle closely while facing each other on their sides, were probably buried at the same time, possibly an indication of sudden and tragic death, Bondioli said."


The story and article strike a cord with me today as I was thinking about "forevers" on my way to clinic. What is "forever" really? Is it a moment? A year? A feeling? A concept? Because we can no more touch "forever" than we can touch "faith." But in the same way, do we believe in it for it to exist?

I used to be very uncomfortable when my first boyfriend would talk about he and I together "forever." I could not see that far ahead of me. And even if I could I wasn't sure that he would be there. Then we broke up and I wanted the security of his forever. I wanted to know and trust that something would be there for me always. And since then I've been looking for that, thinking I found it once again, fighting for it tooth and nail, only to have to let it go again.

And today on the way home, I was thinking about my parents again. They were supposed to last forever. My mom signed the "dissolution" papers today. I asked her what that is "divorce papers," she texted back. So in six months their forever will be finalized, too.

So I thought to myself, as I drove toward the sun setting over the ocean, "Maybe the problem is with the expectation of forever. If I let that go and enjoy the moments that may or may not someday accumulate into my own piece of forever, maybe it will be here before I know it. And maybe the moments will be more beautiful because they aren't expected to add up to more than they are individually. Let each moment be its own." Because it is always only ever now.

It sounds good--that letting go of the foreverness of things. Relationships specifically. It's probably harder to do than it is to think about. Because when it comes right down to it, I still want someone to be there for me at the end of the day, every day. The same person. Not a skeleton, but a living breathing person who I love and who loves me back. They don't have to love me forever, just for all the moments we have together, however many that will be.

My classmate who died in her call room at work in November had a brand new husband; they'd been together for 10 years before they got married. He is devestated by her death, "She was my best friend and we shared a love that most people will never experience." What he thought was forever is over already.

Is that the thing about forever? You can't predict when it will end? My parents' forever seems to now be over, too. But they had some good moments--at least I like to think they did. And they think they did also. It's just hard when forever ends.

If I can let go of the concept of my forever, will it be easier if it ends?

Look at what the world is now calling "lovers" buried together in Italy. Is that forever? Or did they die too young to get there? The person who sent it too me says the lesson is that all the bad things don't endure but the love does. But the forever is in the moments--some good, some bad.

I want to think that love endures. I want to think that this couple is somewhere under the construction site where they were found. I want to think they believed in forever at the moment of their death.

"All relationships end," a friend in college told me that originally, and S. told it to me again recently, meaning that they either break up in life, or one of the couple dies. "Unless they die at the same moment," I replied.

Unless they live and love together and are buried in an embrace for 5000 years.

At this moment, I believe in forever.