What if I told you that something like that happened in real life?
I don’t know how much you guys know about German poetry, but the names Goethe and Schiller might ring a bell.
Anyway, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller werebest friends for a really long time with Goethe having been the older one. Schiller got sick with pretty much everything at some point, however, and died, leaving Goethe devastated.
So what did Goethe do? Keep Schiller’s skull in his office. You know, like friends do… On a blue velvet cushion because why not (He even wrote a poem in 1826 called Bei Betrachtung von Schiller’s Schädel [While looking at Schiller’s skull] like any totally normal person would)
The funny part is that until this day no one knows where the original skull is because it got lost at some point.
But I can’t stop thinking about the implications of keeping someone’s bones near you. There’s absolutely no way you do this when you don’t love someone. Like, you’re literally keeping a very visual reminder of that person. Of their death especially. It almost seems desperate. Grief, loss, and love entwined for eternity. It’s a constant memento mori and that’s what makes it so tragic. With pictures you’re reminded of who a person was but with this there’s nothing but the need for acceptance that they’re gone for good. There’s no lying to yourself.
You loved and you lost and you have to live with that.
