Grief is the price of love
Paul Bettany is the only AI that I respect
My first experience with death was when one of my grandmothers died when I was seven years old.
I remember coming home from school and my mom sat me down on the couch, telling me she had good news and bad news. Which did I want to hear first? I thought about it for a moment.
“The bad news. Then the good news can cheer me up!”
She said that was a good choice because actually she had to tell me the bad news first before telling me the good news. The bad news was that Grammie had died. The good news was that she was safe and happy, in Heaven1.
I did not fully understand mortality at that age. I only had a vague understanding that death meant someone had gone ~*somewhere*~ and they were not coming back from that place in any tangible way.
The afterworld
As a fully-grown godless heathen, I do not believe in the stock image afterlife of white robes and clouds. I don’t believe in souls or auras or anything very woo-woo at all. The idea of a soul, to me, is your unique consciousness and the mark you decide to leave on this world through your actions. That has its own kind of energy.
Energy as we understand it in this universe means that matter cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed. In that way, every single thing that has ever lived lives on, taking new forms both great and terrible. It’s how you get from carbon born of exploding stars billions of years ago to the blood in our veins today. Your atoms are recycled into a beautiful, gentle garden; a devastating lava flow.
I get how that can seem cold and impersonal if you’re used to a paternal deity2 watching over you and paying attention to the smallest details of your life. I get how that would be especially comforting if your own family never did. Exchanges of energy over vast timescales don’t exactly leave you with a feeling of being personally cared for.
But that view is also a great equalizer: no one is Chosen. No one is Special. There is no great universal force determining your Destiny. The place you start in life is random chance, good or bad. Your time is left to you to do with it what you will but in the end, you’re still reduced to your elements exactly like every other thing that ever lived.
The Richest Idiot Man is no more important than ancient fossils of cyanobacteria— and they’ll be remembered much more fondly for oxygenating the atmosphere.
In this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld
I got Bea in 2018 as a fat, wiggly puppy knowing that the hardest part of loving giant dogs is how short their time is.
A few days ago I took her to the vet for what I thought was a scrape on her lower leg only to find myself discussing the possibilities of mast cell tumors (MCTs) with the vet within half an hour. The next morning she went in for surgery to remove it3.
The prognosis for MCTs varies widely: if you catch it soon enough and you’re able to get clean margins, you might get another year or two. If it’s aggressive and you can’t get clean margins, you’re looking at a few months. Either way, it’s likely more will develop.
In this life, you’re on your own
I was sitting motionless in front of my laptop like a SIM, unable to focus on anything except the sad natural lifespan of the mastiff when I heard a Dr. Seuss level of commotion and ran downstairs assuming the dog woke up from her post-anesthesia stupor and fell off the couch. She was fast asleep. But my elderly cat was stumbling, disoriented, and the puddles of liquid weren’t from the usual cat-pastime of vomit but because he’d lost control of his bodily functions.
He was having a seizure.
I took him to the emergency vet and learned he was in liver failure. In a moment of universal grace, the vet on call was one I knew. She used to work at the vet I’ve been taking all of my hairy children to for years and owns Remington Pet Ranch where I board Bea when I go on longer trips.
“It’s great to see you, but I wish it’d been under better circumstances,” she said, very kindly.
It was still such a comfort to have someone I knew there when I held the cat I’d had for 13 years as we helped him out of this world into his last, gentle sleep.
Let’s go crazy
The only god left to us in modern times is The Algorithm and it recently showed me a very conventionally attractive woman dressed both casually but beautifully ~*just happening*~ to walk by a device filming her as she realized A Truth: the price of your new life is the old one.
If it felt like everything was falling apart around me last year, this year it’s happening in stereo, turned up to 11. When you’re caught in a riptide two things can happen: you panic and wear yourself out swimming against the current, getting pulled further and further out from the shore.
Or you swim parallel to the shore and eventually you’re able to get back. You’re further down the beach than you expected or wanted to be. But you’re alive.
Who knows what the fuck is waiting back on this section of the shore but I’ve always been the type who wants to see where it goes.
ETA: Bea does not have cancer!!! The results took forever to come back, but it turned out to be inflammation. ONE GOOD THING.
Get Rec’d
What I’m reading, watching, being haunted by.
What I’m reading: I’m almost finished with The Lost Bookshop for one of my book clubs and the audiobook is a fun lil jaunt into escapism/a stark reminder that it wasn’t so long ago women had very few options for how to live their lives!!!
What I’m watching: Lou is my new favorite film.
Reality: ‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
Escapism: I love Mr. Skelly.
Wildcard: How do you figure out the balance between tough love and self-care? If you figure it out please tell me!!
Until next time.
Do you have to know how to play the harp before they let you in or will they give you lessons?
As far as I’m concerned everybody can believe what they want as long as nobody is trying to make me live by that paternal deity’s archaic and suspiciously patriarchal Rules
Related: Do you need content? I have hairy child-related medical bills to pay!