The Big D (and I don't mean me)

For the past week and a half, I have been reading a non-fiction book by Mary Roach called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers which describes all the different uses (scientific and otherwise) for the lifeless human form. If it sounds grotesque that's because it is. I spend most of my time reading with a horrified (and fascinated) look on my face. I started reading it as an attempt to shock my psyche into a familiarity with death, to confront head-on that which I am afraid of and, for once in my life an idea of mine is working the way I planned and it is doing just that.

While sitting in Symphony Hall on Friday listening to the Brahms Requiem, I thought, "In a hundred years, everyone in this building will be dead." There was no fear (well not just then) but wonder at the fragility of skin, organs, breath, the body as a whole. Now, don't get me wrong, I was scared a moment later (and that moment of courage could have been rooted in the fact that I did not really love anyone in the hall), but for the millisecond it took for the thought to form in my mind, death was just something that happened. It wasn't scary; it was simply the evolution of time, huge and full of chaos. I was completely diminished and relieved to be so. 

Penny asked me today if I've always been obsessed with death, and I suppose it is a more recent development. I am aware of the expiring of my body, my parents' bodies, my brother's body... I have spent so much time trying to not to think about that which begins to happen from the moment we reach adulthood.

But Walt Whitman says: 

"What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere.

The smallest sprout shows that there is really no death

and if ever there was, it led forward life

and does not wait at the end to arrest it

and cease the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward.

Nothing collapses.

And to die is different from what anyone supposed

And luckier."

Apparently, reading about cadavers being crashed in cars to test air bags, being blown up to test land mine foot protection, rotting in a field in order to study human decomposition for forensic purposes, or being dissected in medical school labs makes me think... what a delicate and brave thing is a human being.