Tag Archives: LIfeanddeath

death, Meditation, observation

Dad’s Life and Death Lessons

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William Orpheus Smith died a couple months short of his seventy-fifth birthday. I was with him when he left this life behind, the man who gave me and my siblings life and a place and community we called home and family. He left behind a wife, four children, five grandchildren, a great-grandchild, a couple of dogs, and all his paperwork in order.

He was the son of an alcoholic who didn’t hand on that addiction. He made home a calm and safe place. He found the world an interesting place, taking advantage of his many trips abroad (U.S. Navy) to attend an opera, admire frescoes, and volunteer at the excavation of Pompeii.

He wasn’t good at making light conversation or expressing his emotions, except when matters of life and death were involved. He rarely shared his inner thoughts and held on to many of the prejudices that came with growing up in a poor New Hampshire town.

When the treatments stopped working and the hospice nurse came to discuss upcoming needs for walkers and pain management on that Friday morning, he turned from facing life to welcoming death. Eighty-seven hours later, he stopped breathing.

The life lesson I learned: hold fast to this extraordinary life.

The death lesson I learned: let life go when it’s time, and embrace the mystery beyond it.

Thanks, Dad.

April 24, 1981, Rick Springfield (Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet)

death, Nature

Death and Life

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I’m out early this morning to work in my yard before the heat makes it a chore rather than an enjoyable activity. Garden bag, clippers, and a few bags of mulch already in the front yard, I head around the house to get the spade and watering can. Just past the end of the driveway, death was waiting for me in the form of a small opossum.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found what remained after a bird of prey fed – there are a number of hawks and owls living in my neighborhood. The raptors keep the populations of small animals in check – as much a part of the circle of life as bats keeping the insect population within reason. But knowing that the tiny opossum died to feed a raptor, accepting that as nature’s regulating overpopulation, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a loss.

Instead of laying mulch in the front garden beds, I dig a hole, say some prayers, and bury one of God’s creatures.

I move on to dividing the mint threatening to take over the garden bed, then to replacing the snow peas and nasturtiums that have been eaten by the three bunnies who’ve taken a liking to my plants. Two herons make their morning flight over me; a couple of robins peck at the grass; the teen next door walks by on the his way to school. Life surrounds me in infinite variety and beauty. Death, too, accompanies me.

Perhaps it’s time to take a look at these companions of mine – life and death. You are welcome to keep me company.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost – contemplating life and death…

[This is one piece in Randall Thompson’s Frostiana: Seven Country Songs. It was commissioned by the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1959 to commemorate the town’s bicentennial. Thompson set seven poems by Robert Frost, who lived for several years in Amherst, to music.]