Years ago a reporter was asked to prepare a study on life imprisonment. A thief recounted a strange scene about a house that seemed empty yet held a body. The man was found in a bedroom, tucked under a blanket, curled into a fetal shape as if death had surprised him in sleep. The room did not smell foul because the body had mummified. The thief stared at the figure for a long moment, as though attempting to read a riddle in stillness.
What was asked of him? The interviewer wanted to know. The thief confessed a mystery: the owner of the house appeared present and absent at once. He had seen the man with his own eyes, yet the body seemed devoid of life and presence. In the end, the thief chose not to steal. The encounter lingered as a riddle that time would not easily resolve.
There is something astonishing about the dead that grips many minds the moment they consider it. Perhaps it is the ability to be and not to be at the same time. A philosopher named Angel Gabilondo was once asked what death is. The reply came simply and calmly: death is something from someone. It is not a void but a possession, a thing that belonged to a person who no longer exists in the living world. The corpse remains a form of ownership over something that no longer requires labor, at least for a while.
When a father passes away, a child may keep a token, something that once fit perfectly and felt just right. In time that token becomes more than a memory. It can take on the weight of a claim, a sense of belonging that feels like a theft rather than an inheritance. One may imagine painting the garment, hoping the act of art would wash away the father’s mark, but there is a fear that the identity of a person will be lost amid the machinery of daily life and the anonymous clothes of strangers. The jacket eventually slows its presence in daily life, and the owner learns to let it rest. Yet the memory persists, vivid as the moment it was worn. It remains a personal possession that outlives the moment of use. The writer never shared the thiefs account publicly because it carried a quiet surprise, a truth that seemed to shape the speaker as much as the story shaped the listener. It became a turning point, a moment when a person decided to save themselves from a larger forgetting.