Chickens, Love and the Fear to Die

It was a rainy day, mostly, and staying in the coop this morning,  I noticed one of the chickens just standing around not looking well. She is a sweet one, acted well just a couple of days ago. And so it got triggered again - as it does every time, no matter what the emotional starting point is on the spectrum I go through: this looking at the inevitability of death, feeling the loss of THAT one,  - and then to: having someday to leave this earth, this game, this reality, just having to leave, and leaving everything and everyone behind ....going to - what? No matter what anyone tells you or what your belief system is, you don't ACTUALLY know, do you?

None of the "exercises" I have done have the same effect.

I never used to feel fear thinking of death or dying or being dead. These days I feel it, as my mother is turning 80, as more people close to my generation die every day, as I studied the ABD more - but when a chicken is looking unwell, when there is a prospect or perception of them suffering - "it" gets triggered ... and some deep deep strange sorrow, longing, remorse, ....followed by gratitude and ...ultimately, renewed resolve to LOVE ...it is a certain type of heaven and hell ...and at this point I am unsure what the fluck if going on with that.

Looking at death and dying personally - it makes so much sense why having children and a loving family or partner might be so comforting, so soothing when facing death. Something of you survives. If you don't have family, what will remain of your being here? Anything you did or thought or felt? What IS the actual effect you had on this world?

And then, walking up the driveway from the chicken yard - dear god, I wish I had been able to be kinder, not cause anyone any pain, ease suffering. No matter that you did the best you can, understood, you know you caused pain - I know I have.

But even with children and grandchildren ...when the sun goes nova and the earth ceases to exists - it'll all be gone.

In fact, will ANYTHING ever remain?

YES - I know that answer, but I cannot explain it.

For my own meaning, at this time, the closest I can get is - all that mattered is how you loved, that you loved ...it does not matter what ...

and I don't mean "loved ice cream", but that is okay too.

This love that is a deep, unexplained awe inspiring being expanding - quivering wonder,  remorseful forgiveness asking all encompassing something...

and gratitude - such gratitude, for having another day, this moment .....

and so this chicken - may or may not get better which the treatment I am giving it. I don't actually know how chickens feel their own bodies, illness and impending death. All I want is for them not to suffer, to not be in distress and maybe that is just a wish I have for myself. It helps to know, or at least think,  they have a good life here, how everyone and everything needs to die when it is their time, how there is pain and adversity in every life....and how everything dies - sometime.

I wonder then...what it is that makes an individual life well lived - when you are no Einstein, Mother Theresa, Diva or inspired outrageous artist, Alexander the Great or Archimedes type human or parent of some ...So many many many unknown lives through thousands, no, tens of thousands of years....unbelievably many and varied.

Lately there is a sense, even though I still do things, and do some of them well - ...what does it matter, life will go on without me soon enough.  There is just such a short short time we are given here. There is also ...and this is strange, SUCH a sense of insignificance that kindness, being kind and compassionate to anything living ...which it all is,  is the only thing that makes sense. Yes to joy, or fun or whatever, good job and being responsible....but without compassion to the living, without consciousness  - the LIFE - the everything that is ....it is just an overlay.

Anyway ...more than 70 chickens are living in the chicken garden - I care for them ...they will all die in the next few years ...

Dear god, Help me

And those are only the chickens I personally know. ...

There is a lesson here somewhere that has not been learned ....

Some portal not stepped through,

though at times the direction where it is headed seems obvious.

I KNOW it ...it is just beyond this "thing" ....

Then I do an orb run ... it helps

" For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They’re not brethren; they’re not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." Henry Beston, The Outermost House

Do we die a solitary death - like bumble bees?

I posted a little story of a bumble bee on facebook ...and one of the comments was - "what a beautiful story. it seems all beings die a solitary death in some way."

Coming up the driveway from the garden - chicken feeding time - I realized that an entire book could be written on the subject - from differentiating what could be meant by beings, as in the spirit or soul - whose death is something entirely different - IF they ever die - too ok, by beings it was meant - all the living beings  on the planet die a solitary death in some way . As in death bodies cease to be what is generally be called alive - death has to be solitary most of the time.There is the question - was really IS a solitary death? What is DEATH and is there a process. The bumble bees go out , by themselves - but as hives go, as a hive together, though separately - to die - is that really a solitary death when the entire colony dies. If there is a death that appears to be solitary, what makes it so? So, I don't intend to write a book on the topic, but just a post on a blog that is not too long to actually be read.

Seeing the words: they all die a solitary death - there was kind of the sense,  - a hint of something ...sacred and sad about life and death -  conveyed by the bumble bee's way of dieing ...but there was also something in me that says ...while it may be true, that everyone dies a solitary death in some way, it also is not. In some other way, we as humans don't have to die a solitary death.

Here is that bumble bee story in case you hadn't read it:  i learned something about bumble bees today - each fall, all but the queens die a solitary death .....it kinda hit me...they all die a solitary death. Here is the story, kept short - Yesterday on the way to the gardens - i passed a flower with a bumble-bee on it...so late in the season ...it was seeking nourishment from it. today, cold and rainy as it was...there it still was, on the same flower...not moving, or rather barely ....so i took it inside, gave it some warmth and some sugar and honey water ...and watched it come to life...wow...and started wondering about why it was out there....and wondering if it was a queen and maybe finding a way to save it...it didn't seem to have the size i saw quoted for queens....and i learned...that each fall all bumble bees but the fertilized bumble bee queens - die a solitary death. it seemed there would be no point going against what nature intended - even though it accepted the sweet water - and so i took it with the flower and the sugar dish and put it in the green house, under some cover. i won't be checking on it - but for a moment - dear bumble bee - i did see you and there was love....there still is ....

2 examples come to mind of a non-solitary death:

• Example 1 - I recall in the book  "Grace and Grit"  by Ken Wilber, when Treya, his wife, dies of cancer ...surrounded by family, she dies consciously, in the final moments looking into Ken's eyes - and she says - find me. To me ...even though there is a part of the journey through and into death where you,  as a human go on alone ...this was not a solitary death the way I would define it - and like all the bumble bees seem to die.

• Example 2 - And then this morning I remembered something that happened when my dad died years ago. He knew he was gonna die for least 3 months, and when it was time...they called me and I took one of those emergency flights to Germany. They kept him off morphine so he would be able to realize I was there...and he did, though he could no longer speak. He died that night - I was there with him. I recalled something that Tom Brown had tried to convey: when someone dies, you can accompany them with spirit, in the spirit world, to a certain point, after wish you either also die, or have to stay behind ...when they go into the light. So I did that- stay with him to that point....and then there came that time where there was a lot of light ahead ...and my dad said something like (communicated) but what about the family - and i replied - you can go say goodbye before you go. Reconstructing events later ...that was the exact time my then 3 year old nephew sat up in bed wide awake ...crying loudly saying: Ich muss zum Opa" I gotta go see grandpa. i gotta go see grandpa ...again and again, crying...and my sister knew my dad had died.  So - was his a solitary death? I know he wanted me there, was reassured I had made it (in fact I always had the feeling he waited till I got there - for my mother's sake). I didn't know about the ABD at that time - and all I whispered into his ear were things like - remember you are love. They only gave it 20 minutes in the hospital till they wanted to do what they had to do. It was a solitary death in some way - but not in another....i was there with him.

I felt  a resonance with that bumble bee too - or rather - the solitary death. The thing for me -this human me is this: I don't have a son or daughter, or a husband or even friends that are close enough. Whose eye contact would you hold in death? So if I died in the next few days, the human in me - will likely die a solitary death in that sense, even if there were people around.  I wish for it to be peacefully and prepared no matter what, I actually wrote some things about it in the Five Wishes - but sometimes I have seen it happening sitting in the garden, solitary, peacefully (not in the wet and cold though :) surrounded by birds and trees and flowers - and while that actually corresponds to some degree to my nature, it also shows a lack of connection to humans....that would be an entire other section in the above mentioned book.

There is an inner death's door we go through alone, but up to that point, it is possible to not die a solitary death - like the bumble bees. I'll leave it there - and also that in the "in between bardos" - you can travel as a group, that contact is possible. But that is a whole other story again. Being to Being contact is possible - across time and space.

To speak with a Native American saying - paraphrased: there is no death, just changing of worlds. When going through that door, death's door,  into another world, it appears you go alone, there is something inner ...that steps through - leaving everything previously known, behind. In that sense, yes, death is solitary. 

Are there ways to prepare for it death - sure, one that comes to mind right now is the doorway exercise.

OH DEAR GOD ....i could not remember what book it was in...so i did a search  online...and there it is...omg, "doorways" it is even printed as a sample from the book: Practical work on Self right there... it musta meant to go on this page. wow...i didn't know

it is right there for you

A Chapter From The Book

Practical Work on Self

by E.J. Gold

Doorways

 

:)