Alas poor Yoric
Not to be morbid or anything, but death seems to be one of my favorite subjects. Not that I am sort of goth who feigns love of the deep, dark abyss of nothingness … much to my father’s relief. He was a little nervous in my youth that the black shapeless T-shirts and flannel shirts of punk/grunge would turn into black lipstick, black fingernail polish, and a cult-like following. No, this is more of a fascination with the body and the miraculous life that it once contained. Not only does out treatment of death say a lot about us as individuals, but it screams volumes of what it means to belong to one society or another. Our treatment of death shows not only our value of death but that of life, as well as the current state of life in which we as societies find ourselves. I use the plural here, because as much as I would like to think that we are a global society, and we are indeed interdependent with common values shared throughout human existence, in this case the state of the society in which an individual finds itself is greatly different from one place to another. In some societies life is ever precious, but also fleeting and the presence of death neither surprises nor excessively offends. In others life is thrown away carelessly or even waited out, and yet death rather than being a welcome relief is a cruelty upon this earth. I don’t mean to negate the loss of an individual family member. The loss of a child is in any case I can think of, a personal tragedy to the parent during the moment and remains a sadder point in life. However, in places where children are regularly lost, the sting may be felt, but the lingering, earth crushing inconsolability is much more rare.
Growing up in the States, death was talked about but in hushed tones. You could ask about someone’s demise, but it’s best to ask an acquaintance briefly rather than a friend, co-worker, or heaven forbid a family member directly and at length. The loss of a loved one is almost a personal affront to the person who has remained behind. It makes people uncomfortable to discuss it, and the subject is quickly changed.
In other places I have lived there are so many supernatural beliefs that come with death, that you do not use death’s true name. It is improper to say “died” when referring to a human being, so other euphemisms are invented. It is extremely upsetting to, in any way, indicate the direction of a graveyard with more than a passing glance in its direction. However, with all of this, death is so common and unexplained that “sometimes people just die”, it is acceptable to have no clue to the cause of a death. 1st Birthdays are the most important birthday of a person’s life because it is still assumed that until that point, it cannot be relied upon that the child will even have birthdays.
Not to say that I entirely understand the perspective on death here … that may take more time than I currently have in Kenya to understand, but here the attitude seems to be one of matter-of-fact-ness. It is acceptable to talk about death, whether in the past or future tense. Even when discussing the suicide of a co-worker or friend, you might see a sadness behind the conversation, but it is not a topic that is avoided or cut short.
On top of the conversations that I have already had on the subject – which seem to be numerous considering my short stay so far – and a brief visit to the mortuary, the actual trigger for this blog was a chicken. A dead chicken on the side of the road. The first time I passed it, I wondered quickly what had killed it. It was completely intact, and if I thought chickens slept on their sides with their legs stretched out, I might have thought it wasn’t dead at all – but they do not, and it was. On my return trip home that evening it was still there, exactly as I had left it. It struck me as odd that nothing had come to claim it, but it is a busy road so perhaps whatever might have been interested was scared off. The next morning, however, the chicken was still there only this time it appeared that another chicken had been devoured right next to the carcass of the still untouched 1st chicken carcass. Not a single feather was moved on the first chicken, and there weren’t even real signs of decomposition – which is a little strange now that I think of it. Yet there was a pile of feathers, which had been violently plucked from another chicken, lying right next to it. Disease or poison are my conjectures. Disease because other animals would avoid a carcass that they sensed to be sick, and poison because not even the wasps or …. ANTS had started their work on it. Oddly though, neither had people. Plenty of local residents had passed by, and there it lay, perhaps it even still does.
I apologize for the abrupt end of this posting, but I don’t know that these musings are or in the near future will be done. Thanks for joining me on their meandering path, and I look forward to any and all thoughts on the subject.
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