Life is Death

September 7 & 8:  Marc noted today that all my posts are about death.  It's true, so far.  It started with the death of our friend John Lewis, and I wasn't quite ready to let go, I guess.  I found myself facing the reality and relative imminence of death, and that morphed into an exploration of death as an integral part of life.  As humans who have worked so hard to protect ourselves from death at all costs, we tend to dismiss it as unnecessary, if unavoidable.  So I turned to spiders and other creatures who seem to take it in stride.  Or not.  Do we really know?

Maybe I'll pursue this reflection on life and death up to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.  The biggest news today other than President Obama's talk on jobs was a terrorist threat for this Sunday, September 11.  Yet nothing in that feels imminent to me.  I've always felt removed from the danger of death, even with my father and sister dying when I was relatively young.

That is, until my recent bout with bronchitis and/or pneumonia while in Okinawa, then losing a friend to a mysterious infection shortly after returning.  Somehow, that's sensitized me, at least temporarily, to the potential for loss--of a friend, a loved one, a pet, my own life.

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Over the past two days, Momma Daddy Long-legs has been absent from her web (unless the web encompasses the entire bathroom and that's her hovering over the vanity lights).  The male appears to be pretty much in the same place.  I wonder if she hunts for him as well.  I'm not actively worried about her; how could I be?  She's one of many spiders in my house; she's dispensable.

I do worry about our cats, though, whenever we both leave the house together.  I'm like one of those parents who gets nervous traveling with the other parent, because if something happens to both of us they'll be waiting there, and we won't come back.  My mother used to sing "Little Boy Blue" to me when I was young.  That's the lullaby about the boy who dies in his sleep, leaving behind his stuffed animals and tin soldier, who don't understand why he never comes to play with them any more.  It stuck with me, and I can cry on demand just by singing it.

I also worry about the dangers to the cats presented by coyotes and cars and such, but not to such a neurotic level as the leaving-them-behind fear.  I'm willing to allow them the freedom to roam, and am not as protective as I could be.  At least if something happens to them, I know they had a good life.  They've had lots of good places inside and outside the house to hang out and hunt spiders and torment mice and lizards.

And that would be my compromise with nature, I guess, for the favoritism I show to these indiscriminate predators.