To a young child
Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
One of my rats died today while I was at work. I didn't expect it...he was getting over a respiratory infection, and I was treating a burst abscess, but neither of those should be fatal. He was an old guy, though...three years and some...I'm not sure exactly how old, because he was a lab rat from the behavioral science classes at UNC Greensboro.
I feel a little stupid being grief-stricken. I have a co-worker out of the office this week for the second death in the family in six weeks. There's a war going on. Last week a teenager was shot to death at a local high school. I'm crying because my rat died.
On the other hand, were I comforting someone other than myself I would say: loss is loss. Grief is grief. My loss and pain do not belittle anyone elses, they don't need to be compared. There is no sliding scale.
And I have read that one can...one does...mourn every loss. Death. Divorce. Loss of a job. Why not the loss of a friend, even a small, bitey friend who peed on my every chance he got? (He had character, Curly did.)
I don't have a particular faith in what comes after death. I appreciate the Buddhist idea that everything is a continuous stream...no before, no after, you just keep flowing along in different states. (That's how I understood what I read, anyway. I could have it wrong.)
Of course the notion that after death there's a big reunion with all the loved ones who've gone before has appeal, but as I said, I have trouble putting my faith in something just because I like the sound of it.
And if I understood the Catholic Church, there are no animals in Heaven because animals have no souls. That wasn't the deal-breaker for me with the Church, but it seems like a rip-off...God made all these animals, these sentient creatures, many of whom live abused lives and die brutal deaths, and they don't have any reward in the end? Sounds cruel to me.
I have a theory of my own that something happens after death...I just suspect that the something is beyond comprehension. We have no frame of reference. It is so totally different from human existance on earth that the concept doesn't exist.
It's a cop-out theory, I suppose, probably what one would expect from someone searching for faith. And when I lose someone...rodent, cainine, person...the search seems more critical. I get a bit more desperate.
It is Margaret I mourn for.
Posted by Nic at November 4, 2003 05:57 PM | TrackBack