What's a life

the mystery of it all

I think I can by now be counted on to return to my Substack with thoughts on death. What to do? I’m seeing it everyday.

A few days ago I was driving to work in the morning and on the left side of the road I saw the body of the black Father Dog, pointy-eared, ever-doting on his wife, lying there, dead, body decaying. This dog has been a consistent presence in our area since we moved back into our current home nearly three years ago. He and his wife Mommy Dog were that reassuring presence in the neighborhood gallis that we belong to a civilized area that does not poison its dogs. Mommy Dog being the gentlest of souls, she’d come straight to my car door to receive pets and pats every time I’d stop to say hello to her. Ever since father dog died, I haven’t seen her around. Not her, not their kids, and not their grand kids. Yes, they have grand kids. They’ve come and gone over the years but there’s been enough of them around to remind me that their family was still here. Now I’m not seeing any of them.

I know that street animals tend to not live beyond 5 or 6 years. Still I wonder, family that these dogs were, if they mourned, or are mourning, Father Dog. I’m curious as to why they’re not around. Wherever they are, I know they all have to die at some point.

In recent months, all the thoughts I’ve been grappling with around fear and growth and change have in some roundabout way led me to a sense of gratitude for this long and winding and spiraling journey. This trust that I’m beginning to inculcate within myself that everything will be okay, and not just that, but that there’s plenty of learning left to do. And that comes from this assumption that I’m going to live a long enough life to learn those things.

A girl I knew from school passed away recently. She had been ill for 6 months, diagnosed all of a sudden, and then she underwent treatment, and then she died. This came no more than three months after a boy I knew from school also died a sudden death from an accident in the ocean. I wasn’t very close to either of these people, but I had met them once each in recent years, and both interactions were warm; the kind I’d remember even if they hadn’t died so suddenly.

The main question I really had was: where have they gone?

To die so young begs this question, in my mind at least: where have they gone, and what have they taken with them? Because I know they had hopes, and so have they taken those hopes with them? I know they must’ve learned a few hard lessons in their 26 years - have those gone with them too?

I wonder this also because I wonder about the killing of children in Palestine in tandem with thoughts about my own audacity to assume the longevity of my own life. Where will all my learning go, and why didn’t these kids get to learn any of those things, to come to their own realizations, to live their lives?

Maybe what I’m wondering about is the value of a life. Not in the sense of the impunity with which some people can claim the right to take it away, and not in the sense in which God decides that time’s up. But objectively speaking (if such a thing is possible), what is the value of any life? Is it more valuable if it’s longer? Does it teach the rest of us bigger lessons when it’s short?

I don’t remember much about anyone who has died except the warmth of our limited exchanges. The rest automatically fades into a passing cloud. Which reminds me that I am also just a passing cloud.

Perhaps the word I’m looking for is continuity. A life continues after its death, and this can be the only consolation. How? That depends on the particular life I suppose. But maybe this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh can help:

“Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for a cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end. I will never die. There will be a dissolution of this body, but that does not mean my death. I will continue, always.”