Last Night's Dream: Of Death, Love, and Remembrance

I am walking outdoors, talking with Bill Gibson. Bill sees something on the ground, bends over to pick it up. It is the wrapper from a stick of gum that has been folded very small and tossed into the gutter. Time and the elements have polished it into a jewel-like state. Bill talks about his dead friend Lenny. Lenny would fold up chewing-gum wrappers like this and toss them away all the time, knowing that some of them would eventually become jewels like this. He would also throw soda and beer bottles into the sea, so that they would eventually be made into driftglass. Now, Bill said, Lenny is dead, but every so often Bill would find something beautiful that reminded him of Lenny. It is incumbent on us all, Bill told me, to do what Lenny did, so that, after we die, the people who loved us will be occasionally reminded of us, so that we can still be present in a way for them.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.

(William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene ii)