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Funeral for a small bird
by chris at 11:04 AM on June 21, 2005
I don't normally have much use for religion. I don't depend on it to guide my moral compass. I don't need it to give my life meaning, or to give me a sense of connection to the universe or other people. But this morning I was caught off guard, and found myself reaching for something that I didn't have. I was standing in the back yard, on cool green grass under a tree shading me from the morning sun. Standing in front of a small hole I had just dug, and holding in my hands the body of a small little bird that had passed away. Though I'm not religious, I wouldn't say that I'm not spiritual. I felt sad for the little bird, and I wanted to say something meaningful before putting it into a hole in the earth, and shoveling away. I thought to myself that if I was religious this would be the time where I would say a prayer and feel ceremonious and connected to God and life, but instead here I am burying a small creature that is a wonderment of nature, and I can't think of a way to make this as meaningful as it feels.
Maybe it's because I hadn't had any coffee yet, and my neurons were in the morning fog where nothing matters. Maybe I'm getting older, and my ability to improvise on such things is decreasing. Maybe it's because I was alone, and there was no one there to share the moment with. Either way, the sound of my own voice and thoughts didn't seem good enough. And I realized that if there were a God, I might actually enjoy praying.
The little bird had been caught by my little cat. Or so I surmised when I found my cat outside in some bushes, and a small bird nearby that seemed perfectly alive but could no longer fly higher than three feet off the ground. I made a cage for it's recovery, and the bird woke us up when it began singing brightly at 6AM the next morning. It seemed quite energetic, and appeared to have eaten some food and taken some water.
When I got home from work, I heard it chirping happily on the porch. But within an hour or two it was quiet. I checked on the bird several times. Was it getting sleepy? Cold? Weak? I couldn't tell, but I held it in my hands while tidying up the cage and it seemed to like that, as if it were using my hands for shelter or heat. It was an interesting feeling holding a wild bird, and having it look at me and close it's eyes, and then look at me some more. It appeared very comfortable, but for all I know it could have been terrified, and too weak to do anything about it. Despite my concern and intuition I couldn't hold it all evening, so I put it back in the cage. It seemed very sleepy, though the sun had not set yet. I hoped it would be ok, but it had seen it's last sunset. It died alone on the porch shortly thereafter.
Before I put it in the ground, though my mind was blank I did end up saying something. I said good bye and that I wished I could have known the little bird better. I finished burying the bird and walked to work. By the time I arrived, I realized the way I felt had nothing to do with religion.
comments (12)
Empathy eh... catches me off guard sometimes too. Gotta put things in perspective. You hold a lil bird, cute, fragile, innocent, dying. Real shame. Then realise in a moment of clarity that at that moment all over the world people are dying. At the very second you sigh and put the bird to ground, that some kid just died of starvation, a woman is watching her stillborn being carried out of a room, cancer has consumed another child... and on and on... and on.
Your cat has killed more than a few birds, finding this one doesn't make the rest any less sad... seeing starving folk on your television screen doesn't evoke the kind of empathy you felt for the bird I'd wager.
Mad world.
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at June 21, 2005 3:05 PM
When I was 14, with the universe unfolding before me, I become depressed after a piano teacher told me I was too old to become a concert pianist, but perhaps it wasn't too late for flute. When I was 17 I stopped worrying about it and realized it doesn't matter if one can't be an expert in everything, and it doesn't matter what most people say. And so I also realize that we are imperfect filters for empathy. Space and time warp around our heads allowing us to think that our bubble of reality is disproportionately important compared to the rest of the world. Mourn for the little bird in the morning, ignore the homeless person by the ATM, eat a hamburger for lunch. I know it can't really be any other way. Unless you're Bono.
By the way, I had another encounter with a wild bird about 10 years ago when I ran into it going 50 MPH on my motorcycle. It hit me in the chest with a shocking thud as I was riding up a mountain highway in the Sierras. It didn't die (at least not while I was with it) and I turned my bike around, went back and tried to nurse it back to health. It could hold onto my finger, but appeared to be in shock. I stayed with it for a while and ended up leaving it in a tree. In my imagination it waited 30 minutes until after I left and flew away. In reality, it probably died of some internal injury and the only flying it did was when 30 minutes after I left it fell off the branch and hit the ground where it was eaten by ants.
by chris at June 21, 2005 5:15 PM
All life is fleeting. Last night, some friends and I did a midnight hike up in the Santa Monica Mountains. On the twisty road down, we tried to avoid a squirrel on the road, but hit it anyway. It's a matter of perspective, though, whether or not that was a tragedy compared to our admiration of the summer moon over the Pacific just before.
My family lost one of our cats a week and a half ago. She had been the runt of her litter when we got her. She was starved of milk and had a kink in her tail. We took her and she grew up to be a very good hunter. She's killed dozens of birds, and we suspect she's killed possums. A loose dog killed her. We were devastated. One can hate the mother cat, for casting aside a runt; one can hate our cat, for killing birds and possums; one can hate the loose dog for killing our dear cat. Or one can forgive them all. To avoid regret, I try never to be so busy that I can't take time to love every flawed thing.
That's a Buddhist teaching, for what it's worth.
My iTunes has just now gotten to the band Laibach on my playlist: "Life is Life" :)
by jean at June 21, 2005 11:04 PM
Birds would kill cats if they could, it's the natural order of things. the weird thing is the existence of anomoliies like catbrirds.
by anna at June 21, 2005 11:30 PM
I remember being at my mom's for dinner and my mom, rude as she is, was reading the evening paper at the table. S'like: Crimson's here for dinner, lovely, he's only gonna spout the same old shit, I had may as well read the paper and stop feigning an interest in his ramblings.
Anyway she did the head shaking, loud and heavy sigh thing that a lot of people do while reading a newspaper, you know, in the hope that somebody will notice and ask: What is it?
She started going on about the Chinese and their love of cats.... meat. Lifting the paper up to show pics of all the lil cats cramped into cages, one held up by the tail by a smiling Chinese dude. She starts with all the: "How horrible is this? Disgusting, cruel, evil people they are."
All the while chewing on a piece of chicken. Probably a chicken that'd been debeaked, then strapped to a conveyor belt by it legs, dipped into water and electrocuted, then sliced up, packaged, bought, cooked, all for our eating pleasure. So I nodded and agreed with her: "Yes mom, terrible people the Chinese." Cos I mean, why ruin the meal with the details of how this chicken reached our plates. I like chicken, damn it.
Mad world. Be a great planet if there were no humans on it, maybe we should colonise Mars, wipe out the population of humans left behind, leave the planet Earth alone for a century or ten, and then return to it for holidays when all the crap's been cleaned up by nature. Heh heh.
by Ex Crmson Guard NCO at June 22, 2005 12:20 AM
It's an interesting paradox: religion strives to answer the deepest questions of our lives, namely about life and death, and yet those of us who don't subscribe to a religion find answers in other places because we tend to reject the complex and irrational moral precepts that are inherent to any religion. Any concept of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god-figure is hard to wrap one's head around.... and yet, at certain times in our lives we wish there was something that could fulfill that need in us to give thought, thanks, blessings, desires, hopes, wishes, to something greater than we are.
I ask the world. I consider myself an agnostic, but it's somewhat of a misnomer: I believe in a strange Gaia-type force... more specifically, that just by the nature of living creatures, everything is interconnected. Biology supports such a thought, as food chains and biospheres and environments are all a careful balancing act. God for me is not omniscient, -benevolent, or -omnipotent, but rather the combined will to live of everything that lives. The web of live is, for me, god. Do I ascribe a consciousness to it? No, but in its requirement to attain stability, perhaps it can be comprised of individual conscious entities : souls.
Wild animals have many roles to play, but the instant they come in contact with human life, don't their roles change? Though living in a city crafted by humans, this litle bird probably had a life fairly divorced from the direct effects of humanity.
Yet... in its passing, hasn't it made you, Chris, think more deeply about your life, your purpose, your future, your past, your family, your loves, your path?
This, I think, is a great gift that such a small creature can give us.
by snaggle at June 22, 2005 3:06 AM
Bono: "I don' care about money but you should see where I live." There's more truth in that line that even he probably knows.
by anna at June 22, 2005 7:47 AM
You know, Billy Graham is coming to NYC next weekend. On the radio commercials he talks about how that lonliness and depression and hole we feel inside us is because we don't have god in our lives to fill that hole. The wife and I were discussing that the other day, and she said how it is good for people to use God to fill that hole instead of drugs, alcohol, pronography, food, etc. I don't agree with her on all that religion stuff, but I couldn't really argue her point. On a sliding scale between drugs, god, and personal fulfillment, god is definitely better than drugs.
by mg at June 22, 2005 6:25 PM
"Yet...in it's passing, hasn't it made you, Chris, think more deeply about yourr life, your purpose, your future, your past, your family, your loves, your path?"
Snaggle, you summed up my whole post in one sentence. Dare I say it, I felt my eyes watering just very slightly as I finished reading that sentence. Odd how the truth can be so penetrating.
Jean, your Buddhist teaching is interesting. Sometimes I think it's what holds me back in my career. In my field, success comes with being so busy I can't figure out how to live a balanced life.
by chris at June 24, 2005 2:57 AM
Consider that your whole future, your whole existence really, depends entirely on you successfully drawing the breath you are currently drawing. This one. Keep thinking about that until you die.
by anna at June 24, 2005 7:39 AM
I like that, Anna. I'm going to try to remember it.
Chris, that may be true. But if it is, I admire you. While I hope that I might be able to have a career doing research, I also hope that, should it threaten to unbalance my life, I'll have the courage to hold myself back. I've met a lot of researchers whose personal lives I don't envy at all!
by jean at June 24, 2005 9:15 PM
There is an interesting discussion going on at MetaChat (a chat spin-off of MetaFilter) about what happens to the spirit after the body's death: http://metachat.org/index.php/2005/06/25/p585
by jean at June 25, 2005 3:58 AM