Conversations with a Soul (31 page)

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. And every phrase

And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,

Taking its place to support the others,

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

An easy commerce of the old and the new,

The common word exact without vulgarity,

The formal word precise but not pedantic,

The complete consort dancing together)

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,

Every poem an epitaph. And any action

Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat

Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration. A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails

On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel

History is now and England.
⁸⁸

Born of prevailing winds, shaped by mysterious currents, courted by the moon and hidden in powerful ocean swells; vast amounts of energy have made a journey across immense distances.

When at last the voyage ends, it is frequently not in a quiet berthing, but in a wild, violent, suicidal surge of foaming water. I watch as breaker after breaker is hurled against rocks and cliffs and I see the energy dissolving into an explosion of sea spray, and, suddenly, it is no more.

At other times, I see how once powerful, crashing waves have utterly spent themselves on their journey to land. The terrifying wall of water is reduced to a gentle, playful lapping that comes silently ashore.

Either way, the voyage is completed and the energy surrenders.

There was a time when that grubby handful of tattered feathers now held together by bleached bits of bone and sinew, lived as though there was no such thing as gravity; climbing, soaring and skimming with joyous, perilous abandon over the breaking crest of wave after wave - but now the adventure is ended.

A dead seal washed ashore and discarded in a small cove, lies framed by the rocks upon which it once sunbathed. It will no longer delight me with its smooth glides through the water and curious stares at beachcombers.

The crumpled body of a fawn waits by the side of the road for someone from the Animal Humane Society to remove it from sight. Only then can I go about my business without being accosted by its death.

In a place so redolent with surging life and bubbling vitality, it ought to come as no surprise that it must also be a place of death, (for the two, life and death, are long-time travelling companions) but I never expect it and it always leaves me feeling, somehow, violated.

Death is an offence.

Each reminder of mortality comes as an ugly interruption to my celebration of life.

Most of the time it refuses to be ignored and it seldom makes sense, especially when the good ones die too soon and the cruel ones don’t.

Death demands some kind of accommodation from me, but I don’t know
what
, and I don’t know
how
. I want everything to stay the same and for life, beauty, laughter, friendships to go on forever and forever but I know it won’t, and that sometimes leaves me wrestling with feelings of futility, and a sense of having been betrayed.

I also know that from the beginning of time it has been thus.

Our universe was born out of the death of a star and from that moment on life and death coexisted, together making their way through our universe, holding hands in a macabre dance but it has never been quite clear to me who takes the lead and who follows.
⁸⁹

The evidence of death would be a lot more pressing and significantly more burdensome were it not, as Lewis Thomas once suggested, that Nature has an amazing ability to take care of the dead. Consider the thousands upon thousands of flies, gnats, mosquitoes, moths, worms, spiders, ants and all the creeping and crawling things that have died just beyond the front door. One would assume that everywhere there would be piles of dead creatures, but no! Like all good mothers, Mother Nature has taken care of the problem and spared us from having to wade through heaps of dead insects. Just what happens to those tiny corpses, I don’t know. I suspect that some of them get eaten and some of them contribute nourishment to the earth, and as for the rest, I am happy to remain ignorant.

Throughout the history of animate life, both human and animal, the single most common factor linking every creature to every other creature must surely be that of death. Nothing and no one outlives death: no matter how evil or virtuous, how healthy or sickly, how educated or ignorant, how poor or wealthy, how handsome or ugly, how industrious or lazy, how swift or slow, whether male or female, believer or unbeliever, sooner or later every living thing must die.

Death is the one ultimate common denominator.

It’s true that we have
raged against the dying of the light
and, to our credit, we have won a few skirmishes. In some places we have even extended, what we call “life expectancy” and we will probably continue to do so.

But we have not won the war and we never will.

Nevertheless, armed and aided by medical science and the pharmaceutical industry, we will continue to fight against death in a vain attempt to stave off its victory. Not only have we become the sworn enemies of death but we have enlisted in a war against
signs of ageing
(the general prelude to dying).

Newsweek
recently published an article in which a former actress confessed to swallowing over 60 vitamin pills every day:

I take about 49 supplements in the morning and then before I go to bed I try to remember to start taking the last 20.

Additionally she
rubs a potent oestrogen cream into the skin of her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day she uses a syringe to inject oestrogen directly into her vagina . . . thus fooling her body into thinking she is a younger woman.
⁹⁰

Health food stores must love people like this!

Alternatively, if the pill and potion route is too demanding, we have the ability to dupe death into thinking it really claimed us, while all the while we were simply hiding out in a state of suspended animation!

Thanks to Cryonics you have the choice of having your body, or body parts, frozen to minus 150 degrees centigrade, until such time as science has figured out how to cure what ailed you and thereafter restore you to the status of a living, functioning being; whereupon, presumably, you will start the ageing process all over again. I’m not sure how many times we can re-freeze someone’s head way past the 'use by' date!

Most of us cannot afford the cost of cryonics and, within reason; we shun the vitamin and creams route which leaves us having to settle for an uneasy accommodation to the inevitability of death.

Without morosely dwelling on the subject, in quiet moments we understand that one day we will die, although how and when, is mercifully kept from us. Death keeps silent about the future but even in its silence, death is not through with us and periodically it accosts us with a reminder that it will have its victory.

Apart from the camaraderie and laughter that characterizes most reunions, at some point in the evening we will be reminded that a once beloved face and voice is no longer with us; and just for a moment a shadow will pass amongst us and an awareness of the impermanence of life and relationships will invade our celebration.

The father of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, contended that it is impossible for us to imagine our own death arguing that
... whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators... in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.
Yet the moment we try to clothe that assurance in words and begin to ask questions about the
where
and
how,
and most importantly about
what follows,
we find ourselves setting out on a strange journey, where the usual landmarks of life disappear.

Like clergy men and women everywhere, summoned to comfort a mourning family, I soon became familiar with their need to tell stories about their deceased relative. Nouns, verbs and adjectives fell in place, in an orderly fashion with adverbs and prepositions, and suddenly they became the agents in the telling of a life history. Often the narrative began with;
I remember on one occasion…
and,
did I ever tell you about the time…
?

Sometimes the anecdotes encouraged a certain lightness of spirit. Rooted in some humorous episode, they summoned and legitimized peals of laughter, affording us a welcome break from grief. At other times the memories were poignant and demanded tears. Most often the stories acknowledged that everyone present had access to a store of common experiences, all centred on the person who had died.

I came to understand that in the sharing of anecdotes a healing was happening. Yet the inevitable context of every story was that it was always set in the past. As we fumbled about looking for a few words that still had the power to bridge the gulf between what was and what might yet be, we discovered there were none and we took refuge in silence.

Periodically, in an attempt to break out of the void, some brave soul would try to reassure the group of mourners that,
I know we will meet again!
Wrapped in those words, the human spirit frail, vulnerable and powerless nevertheless refused to bow before death and fulminated against the possibility of an eternal separation.

Secretly we promised ourselves that we would craft a different syntax, discover another language, summon other realities, and an alternative way of envisioning the future would open up that will not end in silence. Even though we may not have had a clear picture of what that future might look like, because once we loved another, we remained addicted to hope.

Somewhere in the Dordogne Valley some 200,000 years ago, something in the cave had stirred and the stirring immediately brought Ut awake. He listened for a while for any sound that might herald danger, but there was none. The crackle of burning wood and the flickering dance of shadows and flames reassured him that the fire at the mouth of the cave was still burning brightly. It was then that he saw what had awakened him.

In the light cast by the fire he saw his woman, Ka, bending over her child, Ling.

Ut rose from his bed and crossed the cave to look down at the Ka-Ling. The little girl’s breathing was shallow and a feverish perspiration drenched her from head to toe. Ut had seen this before and he suspected that soon the breath would leave the Ling and it would not return.

The next morning it was as he had expected and the Ka-Ling breathed no more. He gathered several flints and started to scrape on the rocky floor at the back of the cave. This was the custom and Ut had seen it done before. Using his hands and a few simple tools he began to fashion a trench.

While Ut dug the shallow grave, Ka gathered bunches of wild flowers. The elders would not come to the cave to burn fires and eat, for the Ling was only a child and had no real standing amongst the tribe yet the trouble to which the man and woman went spoke of their need to prepare their daughter for a journey. Finally the woman made her way back into the cave and waited for Ut to finish digging.

At last the work was done and Ut scooped up the Ling, still wrapped in the bedding skins, and placed the tiny body in the trench. Then, Ka knelt down and carefully arranged the flowers she had gathered.

They both paused a moment and looked at the Ling's body encircled with wild flowers. Something deep inside them, not yet formed, or brought to consciousness, but intuitively grasped, understood that they had done the right thing and there was nothing else that needed to be done.

They understood too that life and death and daily happenings had significance far beyond what could be seen and grasped.

Then, with great care, Ut covered the Ling and the flowers with rocks and rubble.