On a recent morning I rode my bicycle down a windy two lane road. I was struck by the beauty of the sky which shone with particular splendor. The deep blue hues contrasted with fluffy white clouds, creating this opulent–almost transcendent–canopy. It is one of the reasons I love riding my bike in the morning. Looking at the landscape fills me with awe and peace. There is a distinct temptation to worship the sky in all its transcendent glory, and were it not for the knowledge of the one who made it, I would easily slip into bowing down before it.
While traveling down any road, it is of the utmost importance to keep one’s focus on the path ahead, or in my case, the cracked concrete. One false turn of the handlebars and I will tumble into a ditch or worse, oncoming traffic. If I have learned anything over the years it is this: there is no love lost between harried drivers and pokey cyclists. And so on this early morning outing I was enjoying the relatively car-free road when I almost ran over a very large, but dead, frog. It wasn’t mashed to a pulp(as they usually are), but rather splayed out across the white line, as if it had leapt at just the wrong moment and bonked into a bumper. Its limp carcass lay motionless, a singular portrait of that final act of self-preservation. And I do not know what will happen next, whether it will be eaten by birds or simply rot into the dirt, but I do know that this frog-loving cyclist was deeply grieved to see it.
Now this may be the moment where you say, “Margaret, are you seriously grieving a dead frog? That’s just weird.” I get it. I’m weird. Sorry about that. I just like frogs because my daddy used to catch frogs for me when I was a little girl. He would hand a toad to me and say, “Look at that. Isn’t he cute?” So every frog is a reminder to me of the love my father has for creatures and for me. Dead frogs ignite within me a certain sadness no matter how many I see on the side of the road. Death disturbs me—as it should. And here is a certain and sustainable truth, death is a horrible reality for the living.
Andrew Peterson writes in his song, Come Back Soon that “every death is a question mark at the end of a book of a beating heart.” Those words resonate with me because I wonder about dead creatures. What happens to them when they die?
Now you have to understand that my mother is reading this saying, “Margaret, you anthropomorphize animals too much.” Or rather, I give human qualities to them as if they had the same value. And I want you to know that I’m rolling my eyes because that is my job as an ornery daughter. But importantly, I see animals through the lens of the beauty of creation. I see the tiny working legs, the moist skin, the intricacies of pupils and a mighty yet wordless tongue that can grab an insect from the air in the fraction of a breath. These things amaze me. I think animals are beautiful. And when a beautiful thing ceases to be beautiful, it makes me sad.
My beloved friend, Hodges
I sat on the floor of the emergency vet’s office a few years ago with my friend, Hodges. He was suffering terrible pain due to tumors in his belly and advanced age. I had been trying to prepare my heart for the moment he passed from this world, but I have since learned that nothing can prepare you for that. I felt my lungs close up even as tears streamed from my eyes. I remember that distinct feeling of wanting to hold onto his spirit as it left his body, but there was nothing to grasp. And I felt this chasm open up in me such as I have never experienced before or since. It was a loss so painful I literally felt as if I was being split open. Hodges was a kindred spirit to me, a beacon of light, my best friend. He knew my sadness and always sought to assuage it, so the loss of him rendered me desolate. All I could think was, who will comfort me now? Maybe because it was the first great loss in my life, I didn’t handle it well. I remember waiting in the lobby to settle the bill and seeing other pet owners with their friends. A vicious thought entered my mind, “At least they get to leave with their animals? I don’t. And it’s not fair.”
This is the feeling death produces in me, the absolute unfairness of it. My soul cries out for an answer to this mostly unspeakable question, “Why must living things die?”
I have been trying to prepare my children for it when I hardly know how to prepare myself. And so when I found myself talking to a friend recently about the loss of her child, I felt so foolish. She said, “Two years have passed and it never gets any easier. The pain is just as fresh today as it was the first day. My thoughts run in circles and I can’t escape the fact that I won’t see her again in this life. It is unbearable.”
We can distract ourselves with baubles. We roll around in nice cars. We buy fancy new boots. We eat a bowl of ice cream. We run. These simple pleasures may placate our lust for whimsy, but they don’t address the flaws in our affections. They direct our gaze to the aesthetic rather than the soul. Death cuts through all that. It is an assault on our fundamental identity as living human beings. Because at some point we all have to deal with the reality of losing someone we love. Maybe you can hide your question. Maybe you can even pretend you don’t ask it. But death doesn’t care. It just goes on killing.
Money doesn’t make us safe. A good job doesn’t make us safe. Even consuming healthier food doesn’t make us safe because, quite obviously, there is no cure for death. The implication of that knowledge cries out for some kind of response and so it’s interesting to me that people get so uncomfortable when I try to talk about it. In fact, if you’ve read this far, it is probably only because you have recently dealt with death or maybe you happen to know me and wonder why I’m writing about it. The reason is very simple, I think about death a lot because it bothers me so much. When confronted with death, I always say to myself, “That’s not right. It should not be this way.” And then I start asking questions.
I don’t consider myself much better than the frog when it comes to death. In many ways I am just another unfortunate creature with the capacity to stray into an unforgiving street. Turn on the television or read any newspaper and what is the headline? When Ferguson happened, what was the headline? I remember asking a reporter, “Why can’t you tell all of the good stories about Ferguson?” And this petite blond woman just smirked at me like I was stupid. It interests me the way the media distills their stories into punchy headlines.
Am I the only person in the world who wants hope? I can’t be.
But even while we are (not) asking the question about the wrongness of death I think we are ignoring the more important questions about life. What if we really are eternal creatures? What if heaven and hell are real places? And what if our choices today determine our future existence in another realm? I have learned in my journey that today’s decisions determine tomorrow’s consequences. And while it is not very popular to talk about the reality of hell, (Jesus said it was a real place) I sure as hell don’t want to go there.
I don’t know what happens to frogs when they die any more than I know what happens to people. All I really have to live by are the words of an ancient book that seems to address an awful lot of life’s burning questions. Some people think that book is malarkey. I happen to think it’s not. But most of my opinions in that regard are shaped by this mystery man who said he was the son of God, namely Jesus. Encountering him changed the trajectory of my life. He is my only hope. And so when the question of death arises, I run to Him for answers.
Maybe today you are dealing with the crushing blow of losing someone you love. Maybe you are searching for meaning in life and hope in death. Maybe you have tried to use a crutch to help you limp along, but like the loss of an arm or an eyeball, you find that dealing with death is like living with an amputation, and this altered state of reality is totally unbearable. Don’t lose heart. It’s never too late to start asking questions.
Because of my workload I’ve had to cancel 3 lunches with friends this week, which means I have not had my fill of social interaction. My friends frequently make work tolerable and without them, I feel like “all work and no play makes Margaret seriously stressed out.” So it was that I came home at 6:00pm and began to prepare a home-cooked dinner. That’s right! No fast food for us. And because of recent pay cuts in our home we can’t afford to eat at a restaurant. I’m not complaining because there are people out there who don’t have food in their tummies and are crying themselves to sleep. But suffice to say, I was/am tired and cooking was the very last thing I wanted to do.
