Life and Death

On the left a 15th century "Memento Mori"; On the right, a 2-wk old African Grey



I, a neurotic sixty-one year old man, care for an infant parrot. What is up with that?

I’m way too old to have a baby for one glaringly obvious reason: I could be dead when he needs me the most.*

In fact, African Greys have a life expectancy of 50 to 70 years; so Shanti will outlive me, my spouse and probably most of the people who are reading this blog.

Yet Shanti, in his glorious infancy, presents me with a surprisingly pleasant awareness of my own mortality. He knows something—-in the way animals know without knowledge—-about death. Shanti’s unknowing can help all us humans cope with death.

I fear death for the customary dark reason: its radical finality. Death means utter loss of the world we cherish and everything within it. It could be agonizing and messy, and for sure it will be the stark incompletion of every agenda. No more blogs, no more birds, no more baseball, no more nothing.

Premature, hideous and random death is ubiquitous. Wars rage, disease strikes, terrible accidents happen. Death is relentless. Those of us who have lost a loved one (and who hasn’t?) mourn her forever. Closure, shmosure.

A memento mori, a reminder of death, is supposed to make us shudder, cringe and tremble before God.

Yet Shanti is a reminder of my mortality; and paradoxically, he epitomizes a supreme affirmation of life. Now joyous and playful; now gentle and quiet; now ferocious and loony. Always awesome.

Shanti transcends death because he connects me to non-human animal intelligence and emotion—a world where human aspirations, frustrations and expectations don’t exist. A world of awareness and feeling not created in our image. No Kübler-Ross stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance for Shanti. Just life, love and relationship on their own naked and beautiful terms. Shanti —and all intelligent non-humans who share their lives with us— are our teachers. School is always open and it's always fun.

*One of our adult daughters has promised to care for Shanti when we are no longer able to.