Caring, 2001/05/15:18:46
tom's home ~*~ tom's index |
|
Love
respond responses |
That's the question Death asks Azrael in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man (no my caps-lock key isn't stuck--Death talks in ALL CAPS. Wouldn't you, if you were an anthropomorphic personification?) Over the past four years I've been touched by three deaths: my closest friend, my father and my unborn child. The one listed last, which happened first, was by far the worst. But over the same time I've also been touched by love and friendship, and the kindness of strangers. And touched is the right word--many times people have literally reached out to me, given me a hug or just a quick clasp of a hand, to say in a way that surpasses words, "I care." And I've been at times able to return the favor, to reply to someone else's distress with the solace of touch. Somewhere in there too I found myself giving to beggars rather than ignoring them as I passed them on the street, not because I felt guilty about not doing so--I felt that when I wasn't giving--but because quite suddenly I'd begun to care myself. Thinking about it, I know when this happened--shortly after Caro motivated me to open myself fully to poetry, and I was finally able to express how much my unborn daughter's death hurt. Last Friday afternoon was fairly high on any reasonable list of Bad Days, but I found myself noticing again and again the care of strangers: to me, to the dead, to the living. If we were indestructible robots not only wouldn't we need morality, we also wouldn't need each other in the way we do--we wouldn't need to feel connected to others, we wouldn't need to care and to feel cared for. And beyond the care of strangers is the care of friends and loved ones, who are a delight in the good times and a source of deep, soul-supporting sustenance in the bad. Knowing that strangers care is helpful, knowing that those whom you love care is foundational. Any philosophy worthy of the name must have something to say on the topic of death. My own view is that it isn't death that's bad, but shortness of life. I'm quite willing to face the fact that everyone, including me, is going to die sometime. I'd just like it to be after we've all had long, long lives. As Death muses in Pratchett's novel: ...all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway.My father died after a long life, my friend after one too short, and my daughter just early enough that by dint of a little calendrical prestidigitation I was able to avoid putting her mother and myself through the additional agony of a funeral: a fetus is not a person in Canada until 20 weeks gestation. The fact of my own inevitable demise bothers me far less than the deaths that come before their time, especially to those whom I care for. And I think the appropriate response to that reality is to live our lives well, every day, to celebrate our lives and the lives of those we love and care for, to "make each day a feast of rejoicing". To live not as if every day might be our last, but as if every day matters, as if every day is precious and important. Some more-so than others, no doubt, but every one significant, every one adding value to the sum total of our lives. My daughter died before she was born, so I never knew her at all. My father died long after I'd left home, but for all the difficulty in our relationship the important lessons he taught me about truth and honesty and never being afraid to ask the questions that matter make a difference in my life every day. And while my friend Barry Hill-Tout and I didn't see each other as much latterly as we once did, as work and family drew on our our stores of available time, we still shared many good hours over many years, making each others lives happier and richer. I regret deeply that he is dead, but I regret the past not at all--we often disagreed but rarely quarreled, and gained all the value we could from each other. I've been reading Reaper Man to my children at bedtime lately, and as it happens we've just finished, though I read slowly while crying, which I did a good deal toward the end. Because while it's a very funny book, it also tells the truth about the Morris dance, which just might be a metaphor for something or other: And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of the balance of things.I'd just prefer there to be more than one hot summer between them. |