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The stark beauty
of the new saltmarsh on the Otter estuary in East Devon. Ellie and I walked here at the beginning of the month |
I
read on Instagram this morning that scientists have now discovered that energy
leaves the body (of both humans and animals) when we die. Tibetan monks
comment, ‘You need science to tell you what silence already knows?’
I
agree with the monks. It's our own experience that matters. Science is a clumsy tool. As my little book of Chinese wisdom says, 'Why light a candle to see the sun?'
When our first dog Brindle died, I saw her energy fly from her body like a puff of
smoke and zoom northwards over our shed. It was a
discrete entity and it was in a hurry. I presumed it was her soul. Brindle had nearly died a year before
and I’d prayed for her to stay alive because I wasn’t in a position to deal
with her death at the time. She’d waited for me, even though she’d wanted to
go. I write about this, and more, in a previous post.
I
feel annoyed when I read about things like the above because I don’t talk about
most of what I experience because people mock. They need science to ‘prove’
things. Then the world catches up with me and I wish I’d had the courage to
speak sooner.
This blog is one of the few places where I do speak out, and my time here now
without either parents or Frog is for me to learn to be my whole self without
shame or doubt (not that Frog ever caused me to feel either of those, but my upbringing had). That’s something else I ‘know’, and I knew it as soon as Frog
died.
I
didn’t see Frog's soul go. It vanished in a second, as we stood together halfway up a hill admiring the view and he dropped to the ground with a cry of
surprise.
Then
the emergency services arrived - by helicopter, two ambulances and a car - and spent about an hour trying
to revive him at the side of the road. Then they took him to hospital and tried some more with bigger
machines.
When they stopped trying and pronounced him dead, I was almost relieved as the resuscitation attempts were gruesome. I was also unsurprised. And
that’s something else I’ve never admitted before. He wanted to go. It was his
time to go. He was removing himself for the moment so that I could learn without pressure. (My grief had yet to kick in.)
And
none of that is what I intended to write in this post. I intended to tell you
about another moving film from the Right to Roam campaigners. In September I directed you to a film about their mass
trespass swim at Kinder Reservoir. This new film is about looking after a neglected
river in East London and about what they call ‘wild service’. And I hope to
tell you more about that when I know more myself.
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| Sunset last week as I walked home with Ellie |
PS I realised after I uploaded this post that today is the winter solstice - the shortest day. How appropriate then to be talking about death - and resurrection perhaps. But that's another story.
