Going, Going . . .

Death:  The act or fact of dying; permanent ending of all life in a person, animal, or plant.


I do not like the idea of permanence.  I bet that some of that can be explained by my resistance to The Original Permanent Fact, the one that I need to avoid; namely, the expectation that I'm never going to drink again.  After 24 years of sobriety it still makes me nervous to think that way, and rightly so, because it deflects me from the Original Spiritual Purpose; namely, to live One Day at a Time.  I do like Dr. Bob's comment when asked what he thought about never drinking again: "I believe that if I continue to do what I'm doing today that I don't ever have to pick up a drink again."  Maybe he said that -- maybe not.  I'm not the most trustworthy source of information.  Sure sounds like something a man with a profound spiritual existence would say, or something that a man with a profoundly warped ego would make up.


Anyway, we have an old cat -- seventeen years old -- who is struggling with her health.  Seventeen cat years equals . . . well, I have no idea how many human years that is.  We're not sure if she's just old, or having some serious health problems.  She's not saying.  She's playing her cards close to the vest.  She's always kind of been a bitch that way.  Last night we weren't sure if she was going to make it until morning but she seems to have rallied a bit.


The experience of seeing something alive begin to make the transition to something dead makes me ponder what it means to be alive.  I don't like the pain of loss and when I'm in the middle of it I have a tendency to fall back on the old defense of "It's not worth getting attached to anything.  It's not worth it."  I'm reminded of the old saw we pass around The Fellowship: "The good news about being sober is that you get to feel everything again.  And the bad news is that you get to feel everything again."  It's pretty cool when things are going well; not so much when they aren't.


The other thought that comes to mind is how easy it is to take something for granted.  Seventeen years -- I can barely remember the animal not being around.  As I held my possibly dying, certainly fading, pet in my arms last night I thought of all of the times and places where her presence and behavior has been a given.  I marvel at how easy it is to ignore a lot of mostly good times and concentrate on the totally unfair reality that life must end.  As I've gotten older and my body has begun to tell me that things aren't going to get any easier for me as time marches on I have to marvel at how strongly I resist this.  "This isn't fair," I think.  "Who came up with this plan?"


I have always appreciated  how well we celebrate death in The Fellowship.  Not that we're glad that someone dies but we're not terrified at what comes next, at what we have left undone or what we shouldn't have done.  There's a lot of emphasis on all the good things in a life well lived and not a self-absorbed preoccupation on the dead part.


I was talking with Shorty about the end of his mother's life and comparing it to the death of an unhappy man that I knew, a drunk who never got sober.  I could see how someone who had lived a right life could let go when it was time, without bitterness or regret.  It was pretty cool.  And I could see how someone who had been selfish was terrified of the end, who wanted to hang on as long as he could.  Death was the enemy.  Unfortunately, you can't treat people poorly for years and year and expect them to rally around you when you falter.


Yep.