The first time I can remember seeing someone dead was when I was around 10 years old and living in the trailer park in San Jose. I came home from school one day and there was an ambulance and a police car parked right in front of my house. There were other vehicles there too. As I approached my house and started to go into my yard one of the officers blocked my way saying, �You can�t go this way son.� I said, �But officer, I live right here.� I looked around and saw a truck in the street with a bent up bicycle partway under it. Behind the officer and right where the walkway was to our front door lay a blanket. Someone was under the blanket and their feet and one hand was sticking out. The officer looked at me and said, �o.k., but I want you to look under that blanket.� As I walked into my yard someone lifted the blanket and I saw the body of a young boy about my age. There was blood all over and I seem to remember his head being mushy. I really didn�t think much of it. I knew he was dead, but the image of his dead body and all didn�t seem to affect me. I went in the house to watch cartoons.
The next encounter I had with death on a personal level was when I was around 16. We had moved to Tracy and I would call an elderly woman who was my best friend in the trailer park once a month. Her name was Marie Lucy. This time when I called, her daughter answered the phone. I asked if I could speak with her and her daughter delicately informed me that she had died. I sort of went numb. My mom and sister were there. My mom knew I was calling Mrs. Lucy and as I started to cry she knew what had happened. I said goodbye, hung up the phone and I needed to run. I jumped into one of the vehicles and took off. My mom was at the window, frantic with worry for my safety, but I had already begun to hate her at this point and did not want her around me. I drove out and parked by the river and bawled my eyeballs out. After ten or fifteen minutes I simply stopped crying. I found myself wondering why I was behaving this way. I thought about it and I didn�t really feel all that sad. I sat there perplexed for over an hour, no longer crying, but trying to figure out what I was feeling. I realized that I was acting out what I thought I ought to but was blowing it way out of proportion. I knew I would miss her but I still felt her with me somehow. I went home and went on as usual, a little sad at the loss of my best friend, but not much different than normal.
A few years later while in the next town for jury duty I found a dead bum in the park. There were flies crawling in and out of his nose. I watched for signs of breathing and there were none. I didn�t touch him, but instead went over to the officer at the courthouse door and asked him to check it out. A few minutes later I heard an ambulance approaching but had to get inside for my appointment and left to do so. Not much of a reaction for me.
With these experiences I began pondering death a lot. It was a subject I thought of often over the years. Lord knows I had wanted to die many times up to this point in my life. I realized that I had no fear of death. I also began to realize that I felt little or no sorrow in it�s wake either. I found it odd, since so many others seemed to feel differently about it than me. I vowed that the next time I faced the death of a loved one I would understand it and my feelings toward it.
It didn�t happen for a while. After my depression years. My other good friend, also an elderly woman (Marie Talley), who was a neighbor when I lived with Jim had passed on, but I never saw her body. I would visit her often over the years and once a week or more when she was in the nursing home near my work. I knew she was going down hill and I spent what time I could with my dear friend before she left this world. We would laugh and reminisce about all sorts of things. I would sneak her in a chili dog from 7-11 and made sure to tell her how much I loved her and thanked her for being in my life. I went in one time and they told me that she had gone peacefully in her sleep. But even as I approached the front doors to the nursing home, some part of me already felt it. The nurses were sympathetic and began offering condolences, but I just smiled warmly and said thank you, and assured them it was all right. I walked out feeling joyful. I was thinking of all the wonderful stories she had told me and the times we shared talking and eating together and I knew that she too would always be with me. I never felt a moment�s sadness. I was thankful she went peacefully.
I still didn�t fully understand my feelings about death however. I found myself wondering how I would react if I were to see the dead body of someone who was close to me. So far this had not happened. I suppose a primer for this experience came when I was took a job as a nanny for some good friends. They had a Doberman pinscher and one day she got out and ran out into the busy main street. The inevitable happened and she got hit. I was right there and saw it all. The car that hit the dog stopped and before the lady got out I looked into the dog�s eyes as she lay there dying. I saw the most amazing thing. As I first looked into her eyes I could see the life there in them, a consciousness. But as her body slowly stopped convulsing I watched that life grow dim and simply fade from her eyes until it was gone. It was incredible and in a way, very beautiful. I felt for a moment everything around me at once. Like touching the edge of infinity. I felt the woman�s duress and snapped out of it. She got out of the car and began apologizing and crying. I went up to her, put my arm around her and soothed her sorrow. �It�s all right�, I said. �It wasn�t your fault. It�s O.K.�. We sat in the street, cars whizzing past us and my only thoughts were to comfort her. I asked if she was going to be alright and she sniffled a bit and said yes. She got back in her car and drove off as I picked up the dog�s body and took it out of traffic.
That event brought a great deal of understanding for me about death and I knew without a doubt that I would never have fear of it. Pain and suffering, well that�s a different story. They are things that I definitely try to avoid. I am certainly not a masochist. There are some entries that paint more of a picture on my view of death but I will let you find them. When my Grandfather died at the beginning of this year and I came for the funeral, I realized fully how I felt about death. With his passing I was able to view his body, touch his hands, face and hair and examine my feelings fully. I sat there looking at his body and searching for some recognition of him. I felt none at all. It was like being thirsty and looking at an empty carton of milk. Seeing and even touching him brought no sense of fear, sorrow or any negative feeling for that matter. Then I began bringing up memories of times we spent together, and there he was. Right there with me all the time. It was as though I could feel his spirit with me. His laughter, his tears and everything I knew him to be.
So no, I do not fear death or see it as a sorrowful thing. Regret may come when things are left unsaid or problems unresolved and that is why I try to make sure that people understand what they mean to me and why I try to face the more difficult moments and not hide from them. Life is too precious to have regrets in the end. I am not afraid to die, but do not sit in wait for it either. It will come in it�s own time for me but I will not try to hasten it�s arrival. When it does come I am pretty sure I will embrace it and not fight it, for I know that when it comes I will be coming home.
As for Fear and Suffering. Well, I can�t say I have experienced real fear in a very long time. Since the early to mid nineties. I have been startled of course when someone or something jumps out at me quickly, but that is an instinctual response and not what I would call full out fear. I have known fear. Especially where my father was concerned while growing up. Read about those times in my life and you may understand. But now, things are peaceful. The same goes for suffering. About the worst degree of suffering I have experienced since those mid nineties is a headache. That is unless you want to count perpetual boredom as a form of suffering. I have witnessed and still do witness fear and suffering around me. Much of the fear I see in others seems mostly irrational to me, but who am I to judge? The same goes for emotional suffering. It seems to me that people create much of their own fear and emotional suffering needlessly. But I am just as guilty of that as witnessed in this very journal. Much of my own fear and suffering were self inflicted. But they were, in a way, necessary for me to come to my current understanding and beliefs. Not that I think my views are better than anyone else�s, but they certainly work well for me.
As for physical suffering, this is something I am very compassionate about. If I am able to ease someone or something�s physical suffering I will gladly do so. I would help in whatever way I was able. If there is absolutely no other hope of relief I know I could end the suffering mercifully if there is the need to do so. I have done so many times with animals I have found dying. A kitten still alive, but with maggots eating it�s insides. A dog hit by a car with it�s upper spine twisted and snapped. The little bunny that I mention in the June 2002 entry and many others. But a person would be a bit different. There are hospitals and doctors who can offer hope and heal or ease a great many afflictions. Hopefully I will never be in that kind of situation, for it would be very difficult to say the least. But if all hope was gone, and a slow agonizing death was completely inevitable, I know that I could fulfill even my closest friends request if they asked it of me. Sort of like Bowen in the movie Dragon heart. Complete with the ascent to the heavens and all. :-) As for me, if I were suffering and knew I was dying with no hope, well I think I would stick it out and let nature take it�s course. I would not ask anyone to end my suffering and go through that difficulty. And besides, I have known a good deal of both physical and emotional suffering in my life already. So I would know a little of what to expect. But I, like most others would rather go quickly and painlessly.
So all in all I have no real difficulties with death and fear, and suffering is something to avoid. There are variations of these topics such as murder, torture and the inflicting of fear or emotional pain on others, but they are caused by another, not natural occurences and are actually different topics altogether. And my views on them are just as different. But perhaps in another entry.
