Memory is a precious gift which like all gifts can be used for blessing or for bitterness. Perhaps it is because I am getting old, but I find memory to be a special gift.
Remembrance is a form of immortality. Those whom we remember live again in our memories.
In fact the word remember has within it a description of that process. We return to fellowship those whom we remember.
The special thing about memory is that it is also completely subjective.

After conducting hundreds of funerals I can honestly say I have never heard a bad eulogy. So much so, that I have coined a phrase, “Death makes saints of us all”. It is true. Listen to someone speak of a dead relative who you know to have been a right scoundrel and you will hear descriptions of them that make you wonder if you are remembering the same person!
It seems that this has always been true for us.
The earliest record of not speaking evil of the dead was Chilon of Sparta(ca 600BCE)who said, “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum” which is a little weird because he was Greek and would not have spoken Latin! Diogenes Laertius (ca 300CE)who wrote it down however, was a roman who wrote in Latin. The direct translation would be, “Of the dead nothing but good is to be said”

This of course underlines two realities.
Firstly, that the dead of whom we do speak evil, those real scoundrels (you can make your own list), must really have been bad.
Secondly, that those who rise above the required honour for the dead and who live on in history as saints must really have been exceptional people.

In all this there seems to be a wonderful human characteristic that wants to remember, recreate, resurrect; only that which is good, and true and beautiful. To selectively forget the wrong, and only remember the good is a wonderful human habit.

As Jewish author, Scholem Asch said, ““Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.”
In that way we constantly reintroduce the best of human endeavour into our lives whilst choosing to forget the evil and unskillful acts of the past.

Of course that doesn’t exonerate us from remembering not to repeat the carnage, genocide and killing, but trying to perpetuate unforgiveness by nursing grudges as memories leads us nowhere.
Nelson Mandela speaking in remembrance of Ghandi at the Global convention on peace and nonviolence in 2004 said this, “South Africa, the country that inspired the Mahatma and that was inspired by the Mahatma, chose a path of peace in the face of all the prophets of doom. We chose his path, the route of negotiation and compromise. And we hope that we honoured his memory. And that in remembrance of that great tradition others will follow.”

As we remember so many have died in past wars and those who are dying in current wars and the associated attrocities, can we remember how to make peace?