Things Come Together
I started this online journal (or rather its earliest iteration as a Blurty) shortly after my grandfather passed away in early 2003. I felt like I had a lot to say about a lot of feelings that I didn't entirely understand. I used the journal as an outlet for my thoughts, with no real attention paid to detail, grammar, punctuation, or the like. Just a depository for whatever types of thoughts happened to flit through my mind. They were not really about death. Not all the time anyway. I guess you can say that my grandfather's death opened the door to a bevy of emotions and observations and subtleties I scarcely noticed before. And that level of introspection has proved invaluable to me. Every aspect of my life, whether personal or professional, has benefited from the sense of keen insight it seemed my grandfather's passing granted me.
And now, I guess I'll end this journal with another passing, that of my grandmother early this morning. She has been dying for some time from that less than subtle menace called Alzheimer's disease. She has been fairly unresponsive for the last year and was comatose in the last few weeks of her life. About fifteen days ago, she became completely unresponsive and couldn't drink or eat a bite. It's a long time to go without food, and she seemed particularly resilient. Every day, I've just been waiting for that phone call from my mother that would tell me her struggle is over. That call was about an hour ago.
The moment I answered the phone and my mother asked how I was doing I knew it was done. She had been crying, I could tell. I've never really seen my mother cry, in all my life, but I know she's done it. There was a heaviness in her voice. And a joy. As she told me what I guess I already knew, I looked out the window and, like every time I think on death, noticed how beautiful life is. Trees and birds and flies and ants. So much green. As my mother talked, I just looked at that old Green Machine called Mother Nature and felt peaceful.
But right as I was feeling what I was feeling, directly in front of my field of vision, something curled up in a ball fell before my eyes and seemed to hover right at my eye level. For a second, I didn't know what was going on. It looked like some sort of insect, but it appeared to be floating. Upon closer scrutiny, I realized that it was a caterpillar, curled into itself, that had apparently just been dispatched by a spider outside my window. It must've got caught in a web somewhere on the patio and, after the spider killed it, was dropped on a single line of silk for the final gruesome ceremony. As if answering to my thoughts, crawling down that line to the curled caterpillar suspended before me was a rather large garden variety spider, already spinning its deathly cocoon around its fresh kill.
All this time, my mother was telling me the details of my grandmother's passing. It was peaceful, thank goodness. Surrounded by her children and grandchildren, with her gospel songs she likes so much playing in the background. It was, as my mother says, a privileged death. No pain, no fighting, no bickering from children over some well or estate. Just a passing. Onto where, I don't know. But she passed nonetheless.
And somehow, I couldn't help but feel amazed. I was listening to death from my mother. Before my eyes I was watching death in the natural world. And all around this death was the ever present Green Machine, churning away with nary a sideways glance at the comings and goings of we miniscule creatures. I found it utterly amazing.
There was a time when I believed quite fervently in the Judeo-Christian God. I believed in the ideology, and the afterlife, and the doctrines and everything. I sang the songs and I clapped my hands. When I got a little older and started thinking some of my own thoughts, that certainty wavered. Today, to be truly honest, I find a whole lot of it very difficult to take seriously. And as my mother went on about the funeral and family and death and God and Heaven, I watched that caterpillar turn and turn in the spider's grip. With a grimace I couldn't stop myself from wondering if our own deaths, my grandmother's death, and indeed my inevitable death, is or will be no more or less significant as that lonely caterpillar's. The thought shamed me. My grandmother, to me anyway, was a lot more than a caterpillar. A lot more. But my mind wouldn't let go of it. The greens outside were too green. It didn't seem to care that this little caterpillar lost its life any more than it seemed to care that my grandmother lost hers only a few hours ago. Nature just didn't seem to care.
But then I thought, maybe that's the magnificence of it. Of being human. The happiness of our lives seems to manifest itself in the relationships we keep. It is within the hearts and minds of other human beings that we even really exist. Sometimes I feel like "I think therefore I am" just doesn't cut it. Surely I exist, as an independent sentient creature, just as that caterpillar outside my window once existed. But now that he's gone, he's gone! But if caterpillars have memories or traditions or ceremonies or indeed relationships--can't it be said that in some way he's still alive? And if there can be a sense of life outside of his physical death, can it not be said that indeed there was a life that existed outside of his physical LIFE too? In short, because humans have the capacity for relationships, for friendship, for love and indeed for hate, don't these factors, those sparks of electricity flickering around our brains, make us who we are? Not just in our own minds but in the minds of others? I think so.
I think so.
I think it is humbling to know that we are no more or less significant in the grandest scheme of things than the passing of a caterpillar on the windowsill of an apartment complex in a tiny town in a tiny place. But even in our grand insignificance, to know that our impact on the lives of other people, even after we have died, could be earth-shatteringly powerful. I find solace in the idea that IDEAS can live on much longer than we do. That concepts and experiences and memories can ground itself in the minds of a collective few and still be as powerful as a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, a volcano. Sometimes I really think we exist only to occupy some space in some one. It may dull and warp with time. But that space is still ours in that person, long after the spiders have had their way with us. It's people who make people more than just people.
Mother Nature be damned.
And now, I guess I'll end this journal with another passing, that of my grandmother early this morning. She has been dying for some time from that less than subtle menace called Alzheimer's disease. She has been fairly unresponsive for the last year and was comatose in the last few weeks of her life. About fifteen days ago, she became completely unresponsive and couldn't drink or eat a bite. It's a long time to go without food, and she seemed particularly resilient. Every day, I've just been waiting for that phone call from my mother that would tell me her struggle is over. That call was about an hour ago.
The moment I answered the phone and my mother asked how I was doing I knew it was done. She had been crying, I could tell. I've never really seen my mother cry, in all my life, but I know she's done it. There was a heaviness in her voice. And a joy. As she told me what I guess I already knew, I looked out the window and, like every time I think on death, noticed how beautiful life is. Trees and birds and flies and ants. So much green. As my mother talked, I just looked at that old Green Machine called Mother Nature and felt peaceful.
But right as I was feeling what I was feeling, directly in front of my field of vision, something curled up in a ball fell before my eyes and seemed to hover right at my eye level. For a second, I didn't know what was going on. It looked like some sort of insect, but it appeared to be floating. Upon closer scrutiny, I realized that it was a caterpillar, curled into itself, that had apparently just been dispatched by a spider outside my window. It must've got caught in a web somewhere on the patio and, after the spider killed it, was dropped on a single line of silk for the final gruesome ceremony. As if answering to my thoughts, crawling down that line to the curled caterpillar suspended before me was a rather large garden variety spider, already spinning its deathly cocoon around its fresh kill.
All this time, my mother was telling me the details of my grandmother's passing. It was peaceful, thank goodness. Surrounded by her children and grandchildren, with her gospel songs she likes so much playing in the background. It was, as my mother says, a privileged death. No pain, no fighting, no bickering from children over some well or estate. Just a passing. Onto where, I don't know. But she passed nonetheless.
And somehow, I couldn't help but feel amazed. I was listening to death from my mother. Before my eyes I was watching death in the natural world. And all around this death was the ever present Green Machine, churning away with nary a sideways glance at the comings and goings of we miniscule creatures. I found it utterly amazing.
There was a time when I believed quite fervently in the Judeo-Christian God. I believed in the ideology, and the afterlife, and the doctrines and everything. I sang the songs and I clapped my hands. When I got a little older and started thinking some of my own thoughts, that certainty wavered. Today, to be truly honest, I find a whole lot of it very difficult to take seriously. And as my mother went on about the funeral and family and death and God and Heaven, I watched that caterpillar turn and turn in the spider's grip. With a grimace I couldn't stop myself from wondering if our own deaths, my grandmother's death, and indeed my inevitable death, is or will be no more or less significant as that lonely caterpillar's. The thought shamed me. My grandmother, to me anyway, was a lot more than a caterpillar. A lot more. But my mind wouldn't let go of it. The greens outside were too green. It didn't seem to care that this little caterpillar lost its life any more than it seemed to care that my grandmother lost hers only a few hours ago. Nature just didn't seem to care.
But then I thought, maybe that's the magnificence of it. Of being human. The happiness of our lives seems to manifest itself in the relationships we keep. It is within the hearts and minds of other human beings that we even really exist. Sometimes I feel like "I think therefore I am" just doesn't cut it. Surely I exist, as an independent sentient creature, just as that caterpillar outside my window once existed. But now that he's gone, he's gone! But if caterpillars have memories or traditions or ceremonies or indeed relationships--can't it be said that in some way he's still alive? And if there can be a sense of life outside of his physical death, can it not be said that indeed there was a life that existed outside of his physical LIFE too? In short, because humans have the capacity for relationships, for friendship, for love and indeed for hate, don't these factors, those sparks of electricity flickering around our brains, make us who we are? Not just in our own minds but in the minds of others? I think so.
I think so.
I think it is humbling to know that we are no more or less significant in the grandest scheme of things than the passing of a caterpillar on the windowsill of an apartment complex in a tiny town in a tiny place. But even in our grand insignificance, to know that our impact on the lives of other people, even after we have died, could be earth-shatteringly powerful. I find solace in the idea that IDEAS can live on much longer than we do. That concepts and experiences and memories can ground itself in the minds of a collective few and still be as powerful as a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, a volcano. Sometimes I really think we exist only to occupy some space in some one. It may dull and warp with time. But that space is still ours in that person, long after the spiders have had their way with us. It's people who make people more than just people.
Mother Nature be damned.