It has been several days since my sister-in-law, Mary, passed away last weekend after months of fighting the cancer that brought her down. Her fight was epic, but the cancer prevailed as it had too great a head start by the time it was discovered. And this despite her faithful adherence to her doctor’s recommendations over the years as to testing and examinations.
In the relatively brief interval between the day of her death and today, I have been struck once again by how the world continues to turn and life goes on about its business even as one of us is no longer present to experience it. The most mundane matters still occupy the bulk of our time in the routine manner in which they assert themselves – birds are still singing, fog is still rising in the mornings, leaves continue to fall pursuant to the demands of the season, and the dependable rain continues to mark the bulk of autumn’s hours. Despite the cataclysm of a family death, nothing appears to have affected this routine, the views from our windows remain unchanged. Humptulips County steadfastly adheres to its routine as if nothing happened.
But something did happen, even if the ripples from Mary’s passage were not of seismic impact in the way that, say, the assassination of a renowned world leader might have been. While Mary had no children, she lived the life of a busy, successful professional and, in so living, enabled many others to earn their livings and have children of their own. In this way she contributed to life’s endurance.
To me, life is an entity unto itself that employs many forms to carry it forward through time. Each living thing is but one molecule among the many that, in combination, constitute the river of life; each living thing contributes to the river’s forward motion by serving its term and endowing life with the means to carry on beyond that term. Those of us with children leave someone to leap-frog us and carry the life force forward beyond our farthest reach; all of us, childless or not, help provide the goods and services required for others to reproduce and continue the effort. It’s all of a piece, whether orchestrated or not, whether accidental or a deliberate result of the will of a greater unknowable entity.
The important thing about life is not the reason it first occurred; the importance of life is in its will to persist. Of course we are curious about why life occurred in the first instance. All cultures have a creation myth, after all. But when we use the zealotry of our beliefs to assert them forcefully upon others, when we try to assert the primacy of our creation myth over that of others – even unto the point of murder – we demonstrate an inherent failure of understanding of the importance of life’s miracle. And even when acts of murder become societal affairs which periodically attain the unimaginable level of the Holocaust, life simply continues on after the latest eruption has calmed despite the absence of the innumerable souls left behind when the eruption has spent itself.
Mary’s sustained battle with her cancer is ample evidence of life’s indomitable will to move forward through time, and her death demonstrated that each living thing – each of us – is a fragile vessel which will serve life’s willpower only for as long as it is able. She fought with tooth and claw, fought on despite the doubts and concerns of her doctors, fought on with the loving and able assistance and gentle understanding of her husband, Gregg. For she understood life’s imperative; she understood that life is a long distance relay and that each of us must carry our portion, our baton, as far as we can before handing it off to another.
And in Mary’s death lies an understanding of our own purpose; and in the manner of her fight to live is a lesson for us all.
