Today began with Life and Death, and ended with it too. Life: a cool-aired morning run, under crystalline azure blue skies, vivid green leaves waving appreciation for their newly-budded life, bird songs of every feather, like that of a South Pacific tropical island. High overhead a circling hawk soared, its stationary wings riding the airwave in easy, wide arcs. Life, freely roaming, freely happening as I filled my lungs with the what’s still free*.
*[Let the corporate, capitalist privatizers find a way to control our air and we’ll REALLY BE IN TROUBLE! We MUST, WE MUST, WE MUST take back our water, and put it in the public domain. NO essential resource should be subject to private profit. Food is plentiful and there is much, much competition, so it is different. Oil and coal…well, now we know why many countries nationalize those industries, for their greater public good.]
The radio drive to work brings death: Iraq, railroad crossings and rats. Yes, rats on the local morning talk show with the local “balanced” talk show. Turns out a condemned property is overrun with that furry mammal, so cute and cuddly as a Beanie Baby, or as one of its cousins, the squirrel, but as a rat, well, they rate as only disgusting vermin.
A PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) spokesperson suggested capture and lethal injection as a much more humane way to dispose of the rats. The hostess was aghast—“But they’re RAT-T-T-S! Disgusting vermin, all we want to do is KIL=L-L them!” The talk show hostess was so, so dismissively condescending and incredulous that the young lady could even suggest a more humane way to handle the problem.
But she did not even stop to consider: a) it costs about the same, 2) it is HEALTHIER for humans, because once the rat is poisoned, it runs off to who knows where before it dies, to then rot, attract germs, maggots, YECH-H-H. Further, that approach and attitude is consistent with her stands, which seem to mirror most of the other “fair and balanced” camp, on everything from immigration to capital punishment: DEATH, death of the body, death of the spirit, and death of hope.
She and they would imprison illegals and, any who aid or abet them, and send them back, period. They believe in the death penalty, period. No deeper thinking, just raw eye for an eye emotionalism. The states with the HIGHEST murder rate are death penalty states, those with the lowest—countries as well—ban capital punishment. Immigration is likewise fraught with policy and fairness issues to make their “rack ‘em up” solution foolhardy as well as hard-hearty.
Well, a long time former employee, Brian Gibbs, passed away and I drove to the most northeastern tip of Kentucky, South Shore, on the Ohio border. Like all drives through rural Kentucky, it was just beautiful. Rolling green hills, trees, forests, and farmlands. One thing about a one-stop light town is that the funeral home is real easy to find. Inside was his family, who were all very appreciative of my visit.
Then, there was Brian. He had suffered a form of cancer and got a bone marrow transplant from his brother a few years ago. It affected his immune system and he started wasting away over the last 6 months. He was literally a ghost of the robust, smiling spirit that I knew—down to 100 pounds. I cried as I saw him lying in the box, with our trademarked bugler logo on the lapel of his suit. I tear up now thinking about that: such a great person, loyal to our company—he worked in FOUR different towns, wherever we needed him to go, and now we will be with him, where he goes.
All there seemed in good spirits, there was laughter and good cheer, as one might expect after a long awaited suffer-releasing death, the initial grief gone. The sense was that HE has graduated and is truly in the best place, blazing a path to welcome us some day. It was hope. It was peace. It was life. It was good.
Said my good byes and hit the road again. It was night now and there is one thing about driving in rural Kentucky on a spring/summer night: BUGS, BUGS, BUGS galore! Bugs of all sort, and with the high beam it looked like snow! But instead of the soft powdery landing of flakes, it was SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT on the windshield. Life free flying through the wild Kentucky night one second, SPLAT, life OVER the next.
Do bugs think? Perhaps they were returning from or going to a date. Maybe to eat, or just to sightsee. Like the trillions before them, little did they know they’d end up as window décor. No eulogies, no tears, no lover’s remorse. Just the chipped rubber blade of the next gas stop’s squeegee.
As I thanked my lucky stars that I was the squeeg-er and not the squeeg-ee I stopped at a CVC to get the only sensitive skin pre-electric lotion I know of. A very cute young lady rang me up…and after all that death, I never felt more alive!
Rfd 6/8/06
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