Inheriting a Bingyamong

My great aunt Peppy was an adventurous traveller even up until the time of her death this month. She travelled all over the world, and accumulated knick-knacks from her visits to foreign countries. At the reception following her graveside service, there was a display of these tchotchkes, and each relative was encouraged to take one as a memento. Immediately, I was drawn to a miniature of a terracotta soldier.

A Chinese emperor (Qin, I think) 2,000 years ago was so influential and correspondingly vain as to have over 6,000 life-sized statues of soldiers and their horses buried with him. I once saw a travelling exhibit of them in Denver, so I recognized the artifact fom Peppy's collection. Looking at it now, I can think of no better token to take from a funeral.

You see, Peppy had no surviving children. She was indisputably a world-class woman with a fiery, elegant spirit, but she doesn't seem to have left anything behind her. Not even blood. It is a testament to her person that nieces and nephews (including myself) came from all over the country--and even from Canada--to pay tribute to her life. But as they lowered the creamy lacquer box containing her remains into the ground, I was struck by the relative insignificance of another priceless human leaving our experience--perhaps forever.

The Qin emperor failed to recognize just how quickly we pass from this plane. He was so desperate to cling to temporal power that he now registers in history as an object lesson a la Shelley's Ozymandias. Maybe in the next phase of existence, Peppy is sitting him down to teach him a thing or two about real living.