I seem to be surrounded by issues concerning death lately. It began a week ago yesterday when Barbara Coombs Lee spoke at First Unitarian Society (my church in Madison) about Compassion and Choices, an organization that advocates for more choice and better care at the end of life. This week a friend told me about the suicide of his best buddy. And even the Sunday newspaper had a comic strip about our fear of death.

There’s probably a second reason for what some might consider my morbid train of thought. Life and death dance together in every moment, so perhaps focusing exclusively on life the week before last meant that I’d need to focus exclusively on death for a while. The week before last, I was fully embedded in life, enjoying my entire family at the beach. The “grands” were there — Aunt Lou, Uncle Bob and my mother, all in their late eighties. The “rents” were there, the parent generation of my sisters, me and our spouses in our fifties and sixties. And the “kids” were there as well — my mother’s grandchildren and their partners, in their teens, twenties and thirties. Twenty-three of us representing (almost) all stages of life (none of the “kids” has given birth yet, but that may be coming soon).

Being immersed in family on the North Carolina shore was a life-enhancing experience in all sorts of ways. I could look backward and forward in time, depending on the conversation. And I could see our collective genes continuing in the “kids” in wonderful ways. What a great group of young people!

We’re a nature-loving family (we probably “inherited’ this interest from my dad, who was a dairy veterinarian). So life was real to us in more than a human way. Not only did we swim with wild dolphins (Tikkun Daily, 7/13/2009), we also watched as a black swallowtail caterpillar (we named him “Bub”) went from miniscule to full-grown, eating continuously on the extra parsley from one of our first meals. And towards the end of the week, someone caught a praying mantis, which we also fed. But observing a “carnivore” like a praying mantis fill its belly is quite a different experience from watching a vegetarian caterpillar. Praying mantises don’t fool around. They go straight for the head of their prey!

Life feeds on life. Life is a sacrifice to life. These are the sacred truths that a praying mantis opens to our view. Death is a part of life, not separate from it. This understanding constitutes one of the foundations of my religion. Life – death – rebirth, this is the holy cycle we celebrate in Wicca. But it doesn’t necessarily make death any easier for me when it comes to call. I was raised in this society, and as a culture we Americans fear death and deny it.

More about this tomorrow.