Yesterday felt like an incredible day full of references to life, death, and the challenges surrounding both. As a living person who hasn’t had an astonishingly vivid near death experience I can reference, I cannot speak with certainty whether there are challenges to being dead. Practically all living (human) people I ever have encountered have very little or nothing to share from first-hand experience about actually being dead. Humorously, I think back to and old horror film from the 1980s called “The Return of the Living Dead” in which a zombie (an “undead” person) claims that eating human brains, “Makes the pain go away.” When a living character asked the zombie about the pain it proclaimed, “The pain of being dead!” I don’t know whether actual dead people can feel pain or suffering, but I do know that life as a human being often involves a lot of pain and suffering.
My life partner and I were not able to attend any of a variety of festivities that took place yesterday. We were invited to several events, but circumstances made none of it possible. The festivities we missed included two family baby showers and a celebration of life for a friend who passed a few months ago. Isn’t that interesting? My family was celebrating two new babies (both boys) about to join the family while elsewhere in the city friends celebrated the life of a mutual loved (also male) friend who passed recently. I may not be the only person ever to have encountered such a circumstance, but it is the first time that I can recall this specific scenario happening in my life. The scenario is more intense considering how my male friend died. If you’re particularly sensitive to such information, maybe skip ahead to the next paragraph or stop reading now. This “meta” sentence is placed here to provide some padding for anyone who wishes to skip to the next paragraph. My friend committed suicide only about a month after he failed a suicide attempt. Suicide always is devastating to the surviving loved and loving ones. I don’t know whether death is devastating to the dead, though. Despite what others might think, I’d rather believe he’s in a better place now. Likely that was his intention because I imagine life on Earth became unbearable for him. If he thought death would be worse than life, why would depart by his own hands?
Thanks to the age of internet communications, the celebration of life was live streamed for those who could not physically attend. Not only could we not attend physically, we also could not attend virtually. I should say I couldn’t. I had far too much going on yesterday. Yes, there was a lot going on emotionally, but I also was planning last-minute gifts for my “parents to be” relatives and focusing on other tasks. Unfortunately, I have a long history of procrastination. That’s not true in every circumstance and I don’t do it to be rude, but it happens more often than I care to admit. In any case, there’s more to this story.
Two fairly close members of my family died earlier this year. One of them was my paternal grandmother (my practically blood father’s mother). As is often true of many people of advanced age, my grandmother was not in very good health. As such her passing was not very sudden or surprising. I don’t mean her passing had no impact—I only mean that it wasn’t a tremendously sudden shock. She died months ago, but very recently it also was her birthday—or as I like to call it, birth anniversary. I suppose this is where most of this converges for me. Not long ago it was the birth anniversary of our recently deceased matriarch, and yesterday was both a day of celebration of a cherished male friend who arguably passed too soon and a day of celebration for two new boys joining our family within the next 30 days or so. It seemed like life and death couldn’t stare me in the face any more than that. However, everywhere we look we can see life and death if we’re attuned to it.
Amidst all the personal dramas of life and death thus far in 2022, Angelina and I moved from our old condo (read a little more about it here) to a new place. We’re still in the same city, but we’ve moved from a neighborhood in the northeast part of the city to a ‘hood close to downtown. It was a long, slow move because the two of us tend to move slower and take longer than many people do to complete things. It seems to be our nature. Angelina says we’d fit in much better in Mexico where the pace typically is much more leisurely than in the United States. As of this writing the condo is on the market, but until yesterday we still had a few personal items stored there. Yesterday we got most of the remaining items out of the condo. While we were at the condo, we also checked on some semi-wild squash plants growing in a public field about 50 yards from the condo. The field neither has an irrigation system nor is it considered particularly fertile. The soil is very rocky, mostly sand and clay, and generally looks unimpressive. Most people would call it “dirt” and I wouldn’t argue much. Usually only weeds (a.k.a. plants whose value are not well known or understood), cactus, and the most drought tolerant of shrubs normally grow there. However, with the aid of considerable precipitation this spring and summer, some compost dumping and wood chip mulching, squash started growing in a specific spot in the field without any help from any other human hands.
One of the pet names Angelina has for me is “Farmer Frank”. She has called me that since early in our relationship because I worked on a farm one summer, have gardened every year since, and it has a nice ring to it. I also taught her a few things about gardening. Well, this squash thing is a whole other level. To me it shows what’s possible when we nurture even the most seemingly degraded places with nutrition (compost and wood chips), care (intention), and a bit of apparent luck (precipitation). Abundant sunshine is common in our city and it is in fact known for it. However, it has not been especially known for receiving a lot of precipitation. Yesterday the squash plants seemed to be barely hanging on to life in the scorching over 100° Fahrenheit heat. As I finished dumping a few buckets of water on the plants, storm clouds started to roll into the area and the air cooled down significantly. As we drove away from the condo with perhaps the last load of personal items we’ll ever take from there, rain started to fall. We also heard our previous next door neighbor say that the area where my parents and brother (the father to be) lived already got a lot of rain.
We headed back to our new home to drop things off and for me to prepare another trip. This next trip was to my parents’ and siblings’ house. My brother and his wife and my parents live together for a variety of reasons. It’s fortunate because my brother and sister-in-law will need help raising their first baby and the baby likely will breathe some fresh life into my parents. I loaded up two apple trees I had purchased to plant in their back yard. The trees were small enough that and they fit sideways in the back seat of our SUV. I also packed up other supplies with me and off I went.
On my way to my relatives’ house I stopped at a major intersection. On the median of the intersection where my SUV was idling stood a woman wearing a “bee” headband and a sign which stated: “When Life Stings You. Just Bee Calm And Bee Strong.” I don’t know who this person is or what her life circumstances are. She didn’t ask for any money, nor did I offer her any. The thought crossed my mind to offer her money in gratitude, but instead I only asked her if I could take her picture. She agreed and smiled for the picture. I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing it with you all. Unfortunately I didn’t ask her name or if I could share the picture and her name with others. My guess is that she guessed I might share the picture, but I wouldn’t share her name even if I knew it without her permission. I thanked her for the joyful message she spread and as soon as the light turned green I turned and continued on my way.
Even though it was a few hours after hearing about the rain, I saw puddles of water across the road and on the sides of the road starting a few miles from my relatives’ home. Obviously it had rained a lot in that area. When I arrived at the house there still were some wet spaces in their yard, but their back yard has soil similar to the field near the old condo where the squash was growing. As of yesterday not much was growing in the back yard at their place other than an old struggling tree, some miracle lettuce beneath it, and a bunch of weeds scattered about. The “miracle lettuce” grew from seeds Angelina spread beneath the tree in the wood chips we had placed there to help the tree retain more water. With all the rain we’ve gotten this summer and sufficient shade from the partially leafed out tree, some lettuce not only sprouted and survived but actually grew to maturity and was ready to harvest. My niece (my sister’s daughter) who stayed the summer with my parents came out and I taught her how to harvest it. The lettuce clearly did not grow beyond the border of the wood chips under the tree.
Despite the rain, one of the two spots I chose to plant the trees was still almost rock-hard only a few inches beneath the surface. I had to add water from their garden hose in the shallow holes I started digging to get deep enough to properly plant the small trees. As I was walking around the weed-abundant yard I saw what was left of a decaying bird. Only a few feathers from the wings and tail remained. I have no idea how long it had been there or what creatures had been eating it. Even while I was planting young, living trees there was the presence of death. The most difficult part of planting the trees was digging the holes. It wasn’t grueling work thanks to the cooler, humid evening air, but it was a challenge because of the hard clay and rocky soil. Eventually I successfully planted the trees, but it was a messy task.
When I finished planting the trees it was nearly completely dark outside. I had just enough ambient light to load up the remaining supplies (containers, shovel, etc.) I had brought with me to plant the trees. In addition to bringing and planting the trees, I brought some diapers and children’s books for the baby. They gave me a late birth anniversary gift and some leftover food from the baby shower. After we exchanged gifts and loving parting messages, I left to return home for the night.
As I drove home I was processing the various events and messages of the day. It had been miserably hot and dry for a few hours, and then quite suddenly it cooled down and we got some rain. Thanks to the relatively abundant rain this season and a little bit of care, some lettuce and squash grew where most people never would have expected. The squash might not make it because it doesn’t get much shade or supplemental water and the plants are exposed to wildlife. The lettuce is approaching botanical senility (bolting) and likely will die soon, but its short lifetime will provide my family with some hyper-local sustenance while most of their (and much of my) food comes from hundreds or likely thousands of miles away.
Death can happen in so many ways and it can be a total surprise or an expected, and perhaps even a welcome experience. It can be especially welcome to those who suffer greatly with pain or discomfort of any kind—physical, non-physical, or both. As I mentioned already, I cannot say if or what people feel after dying. Religious and secular minded people have different theories, but I won’t speculate on that right now. All I know for certain is that for the living, death evokes all kinds of feelings. Many people dream of immortality and live with the goal of living forever “in heaven” or leaving a legacy on Earth long after they are dead. That legacy may be admirably famous or wickedly infamous—possibly both depending on an individual’s or group’s perspective.
Death and life are intertwined and not as separate as they may seem. On a physical level our lives depend on death to a degree. Everything we eat was once alive or stemmed from life (like milk and honey) whether from an animal or not, but once cooked or ingested raw is no longer alive itself. On a spiritual level, every human being and every creature who came before us or lived along side us (literally or figuratively) but who have departed from the realm of the living have had unseen impacts on our lives. Whether we understand any of those impacts, we likely can only ever understand some of the impacts but not all of them.
Life itself can evoke a variety of feelings also. There can be beautiful moments like seeing the woman with the “Bee” message at the intersection or terrifying moments like witnessing your loved ones get hurt or killed. Must we forever lament the death of loved ones, despise horrible events of life, or cheer the passing of supposed monsters like Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler? We have all kinds of lessons to learn from life and death, but perhaps the greatest lesson of death is that life doesn’t last forever. Nothing lasts forever in one form. Transformation is not only possible, it is inevitable. We can appreciate and learn from not only the joyful, positive experiences but also the dreadful, negative ones. The greatest challenge in life as far as I can see it is learning to discern and move through the ups and downs and twists and turns of life and to help others do the same whenever we can. Compassion is a key element in flowing through life instead of clinging to certain ideal aspects of it. Without compassion for ourselves and others—both desirable aspects and undesirable aspects—we are likely to slide into a suicidal or homicidal state—perhaps both. While we can’t save everyone, we can do our best to look for signs that we are needed and how we can serve our fellow living beings. We tend to prioritize human lives above all others, but sometimes birds and bees need our help also. We certainly need their help in the very least via pollination services and pest control (raptors, in particular).
When the time comes for me to depart from Earth in ethereal and physical form, I pray my time on Earth will have a lasting positive impact. However, I don’t feel a strong desire for my name or likeness to be remembered for decades, centuries, millennia, or more. For me it’s about the message more than the messenger. However long us humans live individually or collectively, it is likely life will go on. Like the struggling tree, semi-wild squash, and the miracle lettuce life wants to thrive. Sometimes it just needs a little help from love and luck. Thank you for your time and attention. May you bee blessed, bee gracious, and bee kind!
