January 21, 2003

death

I have a bit of a child-like fascination with the death of animals. I don’t tend to shy away from it. I like to watch it from a detached (usually very sad) position. They are driven by such instinct that they never really had much of chance to be anything else. Humans can be loads of different things. Birds, cats, fish... they all tend to do exactly what birds, cats and fish do. They don’t become doctors, lawyers, firefighters, Buddhists, Christians or tech support agents.

One of our guppies was missing last night and after moving some things around in the tank I found him badly beaten, gasping for air at the bottom of the tank. His tail was completely missing and it looked like one of his fins too. I have no idea what happened, none of the other fish are really aggressive so I don’t think it was them, but I’m not sure how it couldn’t have been them. At any rate, we started the rescue. Purchased some distilled water, balanced the PH, added a tiny amount of food and (literally) fished him out of the tank. Put him in his own little bowl.

I realized this morning as I looked at his motionless body that we will all end up just like him. Human, animal, insect, amphibian or fish — we all wind up on our backs gasping our last breath and passing on. And there isn’t a damn thing anyone else can do about it. We can have clean water, food, plenty of heat and oxygen but when it’s time — it’s time. I’m really looking forward to learning about death meditations. Might as well happily prepare for the inevitable.

posted @ 8:46 AM

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