Birth and Death are part of a whole.

Take one story viewed from two different angles. Take a rainy Sunday morning in July, in the late 1920's, when a boy named Eddie and his friends are tossing a baseball Eddie got for his birthday nearly a year ago. Take a moment when the ball flies over Eddie's head and out into the street. Eddie, wearing tawny pants and a wool cap, chases after it, and runs in front of an automobile, A Ford Model A. The car screeches, veers, and just misses him. He shivers, exhales, gets the ball, and races back to his friends. The game soon ends and the children run to the arcade to play the Erie Digger machine, with it's claw-like mechanism that picks up small toys.

Now take that same story from a different angle. A man is behind the wheel of a Ford Modelm A, which he has borrowed from a friend to practice his driving. The road is wet from the morning rain. Suddenly, a baseball bounces across the street, and a boy comes racing after it. The driver slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel. The car skids, the tires screech. The man somehow regains control, and the Model A rolls on. The child has disappeared in the rear-view mirror, but the man's body is till affected, thinking of how close he came to tragedy. The jolt of adrenaline has forced his heart to pump furiously and this heart is not a strong one and the pumping has left him drained. The man feels dizzy and his head drops momentarily. His automobile nearly collides with another. The second driver honks, the man veers again, spinning the wheel, pushing on the brake pedal. He skids along an avenue then turns down an alley. His vehicle rolls until it collides with the rear of a parked truck. There is a small crashing noise. The headlights shatter. The impact smacks the man into the steering wheel. His forehead bleeds. He steps from the Model A, sees the damage, then collapses onto the wet pavement. His arm throbs. His chest hurts. It is Sunday morning. The alley is empty. He remains there, unnoticed, slumped against the side of the car. The blood from against the side of the car. The blood form his coronary arteries no longer flows to his heart. An hour passes. A policeman finds him. A medical examiner pronounces him dead. The cause of death is listed as 'heart attack'. There are no known relatives.

Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue, where one worker calls another worker over to marvel at the blue skin of the newest arrival.

He is eight years old. He sits on the edge of a plaid couch, his arms crossed in anger. His mother is at his feet, tying his shoes. His father is at the mirror, fixing his tie. "I don’t WANT to go", Eddie says

"I know", his mother says, not looking up, "Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen."

"But it's my BIRTHDAY." Eddie looks mournfully across the room at the erector set in the corner, a pile of toy metal grinders and three small rubber wheels. Eddie had been making a truck. He is good at putting things together. He had hoped to show it to his friends at a birthday party. Instead, they have to go someplace and get dressed up. It isn't fair, he thinks. His brother, Joe, dressed in wool pants and a bow tie, enters with a baseball glove on his left hand. He slaps it hard. He makes a face at Eddie. "Those are my old shoes," Joe says, "May new ones are better." Eddie winces. He hates having to wear Joe's old things.

"Stop wiggling," his mother says.

"They HURT," Eddie whines.

"Enough!" his father yells. He glares at Eddie.

Eddie goes silent.

At the cemetery, Eddie barely recognizes the pier people. The men who normally wear gold lamé and red turbans are now in black suits, like father. The women seem to be wearing the same black dress; some cover their faces in veils. Eddie watches a man shovel dirt into a hole. The man says something about ashes. Eddie holds his mothers hand and squints at the sun. He is supposed to be sad, he knows, but he is secretly counting n umbers, starting from 1, hoping that by the time he reached 1000 he will have his birthday back.

There are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate a breeze from the wind. Fairness. does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.

Look at the mourners in a funeral for example. Some did not even know the dead guy very well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people feel they should?

It is because the human spirit knows deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between taken and being missed, lives are changed. People say they should have dies instead of them. But during time on earth, people died instead of yourselves, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. It is why we are drawn to babies. And to funerals.

*Not mine
NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED
Just wanted to share this with you all, its a very great lesson.*

---
On the other note, I absolutely, a hundred percent agree with this. For example, I do believe it’s not just a coincidence when such things happen. For one thing my great grandfather was supposed to be on the Titanic, but he missed it because he was late. I also believe the death and birth are part of a whole, because they are both guaranteed. I also am drawn to babies, I think their adorable, as well as that they are the closest to heaven. That's what my mother always told me. How they are so innocent and why they don't remember anything as an infant. I'm drawn to funerals because I'm sorry. Usually, saying "I'm sorry" for someone else's grief means "I share your grief." It sure does in my opinion. I share the grief for those who lost someone important to them, which is why I am drawn to funerals. But that is my take on all of that. Hope you read what you were looking for. I don't mind otherwise. Thanks.
November 13th, 2011 at 08:32am