A Tribute to the Cycle of Life

This weekend, I took Jackson for a quick camping getaway to Manresa State Beach, south of Santa Cruz. It was a welcome respite from the single parenting grind--we played football on the beach, I did yoga as Jackson used his feet to write his name in huge letters in the sand, and we cooked up a delicious rack of lamb and followed that up with the inevitable s'mores...anyway, the real reason I bring it up is that this morning, while we were frollicking on the beach, I noticed a boy and his dog, and the dog was aggressively barking at a bird standing at the water's edge. Everyone once in a while, the bird would lunge at the dog with its beak, and then I noticed that when a wave washed up, it would knock the bird over and carry it 15-20 feet before trickling out, the dog barking all along. This happened a few times before I headed over to check out what was up with the bird.

As I walked up, it was clear the bird was either sick or wounded. It just was not moving right, and it seemed incapable of flying. I also couldn't tell if this was some black-colored sea bird, or if it had been covered in a light layer of crude oil from a spill. The kid had no idea what was going on, and eventually he started pulling his dog away down the beach. At this point, I sit down and look the bird in the eye, and I may be crazy, but its expression was unmistakeable--this bird was ready to die. It let its head droop onto the sand, and there it lay, only the motion of its breath and the occasional blink of its eye revealing life within. I felt an eerie responsibility to sit there with the bird in its last moments--I talked to it, trying to provide some kind of audible comfort, even telling it that it was okay to go--just as I'd said to Rox 18 months earlier. (Jackson must have felt something strong, too, as while the bird was still breathing, he named it "Pete.")

About 10 minutes went by, and I stood up, wondering how long the bird would survive, aware that we needed to leave (we were approaching check-out time), but not wanting to leave its side. Then, almost on cue, it lifted its head, arched its back awkwardly, fell back to the ground, and lay motionless, its eye now bereft of color, reflectivity, life. Within seconds, nature was onto what was going on, and at least 2 dozen flies had descended and were already climing all over the carcass, including several walking in and out of its mouth.

Clearly, my reaction to this was different that it would have been had Rox not died. The responsibility I felt for keeping this dying bird company came from a place of profound and palpable respect for life and its passing, and it made me furious on the bird's behalf that people were walking by as this drama played out, totally oblivious to the fact that a life--which had been filled with ups and downs, incredible sights, perhaps some opportunities to mate, the gift of flight, and ultimately, some mysterious cause of death--had just ended, right here, before them, on this beach. I thought about how most death occurs without even the slightest tribute, and how that bird deserved to go with dignity as much as any human. And maybe it was the sum total of all these things, and of my still raw feelings about watching Rox die, that led me to sob as I walked away, as if I'd known this bird for years and had formed a tight bond with it.

What I learned is that the grip of death has me now--it will have my attention forever, and I will never, ever look at it the same. I will respect it, I will pay tribute to it, I will do honor to the dying by either recognizing their accomplishments, or at least trying hard to imagine what they were, what the deceased's life was like. At the very least, we owe them that.