Death of a Friend
Today, upon arriving home I was greeted by a weak wild mouse, struggling to hold on to the little life it had left. We did our best to comfort the small animal and potentially nourish it back to health. We even got desperate enough to run out to the pet store to find the proper supplies to feed it and play the role of God for a moment to assure it lived a happy and healthy life. We were persistent, caring, and far too demanding that this tiny creature make it even just through the night. While the other half of our rescue party was out gathering supplies for the revival, I sat with the mouse, keeping it warm until we could begin the séance.
As I sat there, my attention was fixed on the rodent. He began twitching rather uncontrollably. I watched him jerk and bounce with fascination until he flipped over onto his back, halted his rapid movement, and went still. Though we persisted and put arguably far too much effort into preserving its life, the little guy could hold on no longer. One minute he was here, the next he was gone (there is my one use of cliché for the entirety of this blog).
As the mouse went still, I went still. I looked down at the creature nearly as small as my thumb and couldn’t help but feel sorrow; a slight pain in my being. Pain and confusion. Suddenly, I spiraled into a deep void of questions. Questions I would not have thought would be the focus of my evening nearly an hour before as I left work. I found myself trying to define death using nothing but the knowledge I have acquired up until this point. Which, on the subject of death, is a surprising amount.
Death is an inconceivable process (event?). It remains one of the few things in this reality that can only be defined by the ones that lack the consciousness to do so. I watched as the life was violently torn from the creature that seemed to hold onto it so dearly. When something like this happens; whether you watch a spider run from your inescapable foot as it flattens into the Earth, or you catch a glimpse of a video that displays a man being shot by the police, or if you watch a loved one lose the strength in the last string they have hanging onto life, it doesn’t seem to get any easier. It doesn’t seem to get any more regular, though it is something we see practically everyday.
The inevitability of death is something that is just that; inevitable. Inescapable. And most significantly, it doesn’t work on our clock. This fact is something that I learned a little early in life and it is a lesson I was disturbed by and angry with for years. Until I realized that it was a lesson. Death looms over us every single waking moment. The birds above our heads, the dogs we feed and care for, and the people who hold vital parts in our lives throughout our time here. Death of a loved one (yes, we are still talking about a mouse here, I think) is inexorable but it puts an energy into our hands. An energy that we have full power over how we choose to use. This energy gives us the means to sulk about the very idea of death and scream at the sky about our disagreement with it (the latter doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on anything) or it gives us the chance to wake up to the reality that it set before us and let the beautifully dark reality empower us to keep moving forward.
The moral of this story is acceptance. Accept the things you cannot change and kick the ass of the things you can. Life goes on whether you agree with the bullshit it hands you or not. I have had my fair share of feeling sorry for myself and have definitely shed a great amount of tears over the Universe that seems to be out to piss me off, but the moment I realized that the pain is unavoidable was the moment I let the fear that looms over every decision I make be the reason I continue to make any decision at all.
This one is for the mouse I miss so dearly.
Cheers.
