Somewhere
around a mile and a half it stops hurting. The muscles in my chest and legs
loosen. My breath sinks into my low back. My abdominal muscles wake up, engage,
and lift my feet from the earth. The chatter of my brain quiets and the
swirling chaos of my heart calms. There is just the crunch of my sneakers on
gravel. The sighing in and out of my breathing.
Today,
I had just arrived at that lovely meditative moment when I saw a silver flash
in the river to my right. It was a medium-sized fish, struggling to swim. It
was flipped onto one side, trying to dive, but popping back to the surface,
ultimately succeeding only in propelling itself weakly in smaller and smaller tortured
circles.
I
stood on the shore fighting the urge to wade in and touch it.
Because
I can’t resist death?
Because
if I could see the wound on the underside I could understand something?
Because
I could soothe it? Because I could soothe it. Because I could help.
How
could I soothe a fish? How could I think I could help it die?
I
have held many animals and even a few people as they died. Sometimes I was calm
and present. Sometimes I was a wailing mess. Perhaps, sometimes I was soothing.
But I am certain that I never once helped. In every death I have witnessed,
someone left. Alone. And I stayed behind.
I
felt sad about the fish. And suddenly I couldn’t stand on the shore alone and
watch him go. I turned back to the path and ran. I thought, “Murders. People
who fish are bad.” And then I ran past some of those bad people. A man in a
blue hat adjusted his line then leaned back and turned his face toward the
cloudy sky and smiled as if it were sunny. The old dog lying next to him
watched him closely, tail thumping the ground. A woman showed a little girl how
to cast. She smiled at me as I passed, stroked the little girl’s hair. The
little girl proudly thrust the pink fishing pole toward me. “It’s got Barbie on
it!” she chirped.
And
I thought of this:
Every
single being is driven by the desire to suffer less. There is no recipe. We
are, each of us, improvising our own unique alchemy in the laboratory of our particular
and peculiar pain.
I
don’t think this is profound. I’m sure others have said the same long before me
and far more eloquently. Frankly, I’m not even sure it makes much sense in the
context of a woman’s desire to ease the death throes of a fish, nor does it
offer any clarity on whether or not fishing for pleasure is a morally
defensible pastime.
But
it stayed with me as I ran and it helped me feel the pleasure of simple
aliveness in my body. And it made me think about the day when that aliveness
will go, and I will go with it. And I wondered who would try to soothe me. Who
would try to help?
I
hope, whoever they are, that they won’t stand too long on the lonely shore
after I have gone. I hope they fill their lungs and run on.
