Death?

I've been thinking recently about death. It occurred to me, that death has become something entirely too remote for most of us Americans. The vast majority of Americans are isolated from it from birth until their own moment of passing is upon them. Yes, friends and family do die during the course of our lives but this is generally an infrequent occurrence which slowly increases in frequency as we age. The truth though is that we are largely removed from dealing with death. For most of us, death is an abstraction marked by a sense of loss and grief.

There are a select few Americans for whom this is not true. Our soldiers, emergency workers, a small segment of our health care industry, and our mortuary workers are such people. Another group of folks, we don't often think about, that belong in this American elite, are the slaughter house workers; oh, and lest we forget, the occasional executioner and murderer. For many people in these segments of our society death is immediate and sensorially perceived. I am not trying to be gratuitously graphic here, but these select few, see, hear, smell and tangibly experience death.

You might be wondering just what got me to thinking about this particular subject. Well now, I was lying there thinking about my spiritual journey. I have yet to undertake a vision quest or participate in a Sun Dance. I find myself shrinking back from piercing and either hanging from the tree or dragging the skulls. I have had the honor to sit in lodge and pray for the past several years. The teachings of the lodge have been powerful for me. The spirituality of these native ways resonates deeply within my soul.

I say that I walk along side the Red Path. This is my way of trying to show deference to those Native Americans, who are angry at whites for taking their lands and attempting to destroy their cultures and spirits. I do not want to participate in any further crimes against our indigenous neighbors. I am not a Native American. I was not raised in their culture and do not have their ancestral connections to this land. Yet their philosophy, their spiritually feels better to me than any other I have known.

Anyway, back to the original thread. I found myself thinking about whether I had the courage to undertake the more arduous ceremonial practices of this way. I found myself doubting that I did. When I asked why, I found myself thinking of my dad.

More specifically, I thought of him, in the context of hardship, privation, and suffering. My dad was hillbilly. A depression era hillbilly to boot. He grew up in the "holler", without indoor plumbing, hunting and fishing -- with any of the fourteen brothers and sisters that survived to do so -- to help put food on the table. My dad was 16 years 8 months and 30 days old on December 7, 1941 -- the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor instigating the United States entry into World War II.

My dad refused to talk at any length about his time in the Navy during WW II. I haven't corroborated this, but my dad did tell me that he served aboard the USS President Adams (Wikipedia) as an assistant anti-aircraft gunner and as an LCVP driver. I know that my dad participated in the landings at Iwo Jima. He might have participated in the landings at Gaudalcanal and Tulagi as well, though at the time this occurred he would have been not quite 17 and a half years old. Too young? Perhaps, but many a hillbilly joined the military during WW II around that age.

Back to the point, my dad knew a life that was intimate with death, he killed and butchered, countless fish and a lot of animals (squirrel, possum, copperhead, deer, elk, ...) and I suspect domesticated animals as well. He landed marines onto beaches in the heat of battle, and transported the dying away from them.

Throughout a large part of this world, friends and family are directly involved in the preparation of the departed for their final rites. They clean and swaddle their dead loved ones. They slit the throat of a goat, pig, or snap the neck of a chicken. Death is witnessed with an immediacy and presence that is absent for most of us Americans.

I did the fish catching and gutting thing a few times and that was pretty much it as an active death bringer, except for squashing a host of spiders, flies, ants, cockroaches, etc. I touched my dad in his coffin, had some pet rabbits die of dehydration -- while we swam on a scorchingly hot summer day, buried a puppy -- ran over by a car -- when I was 13 or so, gathered up a decapitated red tail hawk and put it in a garbage can, and that's about the extent of my direct contact with those that did not die at my hand. Opps, I suppose I should acknowledge all, the chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cattle that I have imbibed over my life.

Then there are all those out there that participate in terrorist bombings, war, and genocide.

When I try to put all this together in my head, I wonder, if my existence -- so removed from the everyday reality of death -- is well served. How does exposure to death in direct experiential contact inform our weltanschauung?

It occurs to me that the farther we are removed from death, the farther we are removed from life. That it is difficult to truly and fully appreciate life without somehow truly and fully appreciating death. How can we honor and respect life that gives its to sustain ours if we are too far removed from it's life and death?

On the other hand, does familiarity with death breed the kind of contempt for life that permits genocide or wanton and random acts of terrorism?

Death and Life, not a simple coin.

It seems that there is a softness to my life. Is courage, something that manifest only in a world of pain and privation? For it seems, that I am ill informed and yet cower before an abstraction.