Little Griefs

The second foggy morning in August so far, and I am tracking them. Mountain lore holds that the number of fogs in August forecasts the number of snows in the coming winter. Last year it was off a bit, but it’s still great fun to monitor.

Through the fog’s gloom as I drove, I saw a tiny fawn in the road, lying exactly along the yellow stripe in the center. Such a delicate and beautiful little creature, fragile and soft and spotted. It looked to be sleeping as I slowed and passed it.

And I had the same thought I always have when I see such sights. I thought of the doe, watching as a hurtling vehicle roars out of the dark and explodes the life out of the precious little thing that she carried for so long, that she licked and nursed and prodded and watched over. And after the split second of mechanized tragedy, she stood and tried to make sense of what just happened, and perhaps she sniffed at the broken body, a miniature of her own, and tried to rouse it. And after a while, she had to leave her baby on the warm asphalt and make her way into the trees so as not to offer anyone or anything the opportunity to take her life as well.

Such scenes are a source of grief for me, little as they are and brief as they are. I do not share the modern, New-Agey mindset that the beasts of the field are equal to humans made in the image of God, but neither do I see them as unimportant, incidental “things” that have no meaning beyond their ability to provide me with food or bear my cargo. I have stood many times in a cloud of gnats or at the side of a stream watching mayflies in their rapid life-cycle and wondered about the purpose of so many little creatures who appear, exist, die, and fade from existence.

I believe there is a purpose to these little lives. Misguided and sentimental I may be, but I also believe that my noticing them and feeling a moment’s grief for them matters, that it contributes something to the life I am living, this span of years that will someday end and in which I hope to learn the lessons I was placed here to learn.

I remember as a teenager watching the television series Kung Fu, starring David Carradine. In the pilot movie for the series, one of the Shaolin monks, Master Kan, speaks to young Caine while they are watching a demonstration of various animal forms of gungfu. Stressing the importance of not using violence indiscriminately, the monk tells the boy, “All life is precious, neither can any be replaced.” This sentence, written by a Hollywood screenwriter and uttered by a professional actor paid to mouth the words handed to him in a script, made an impression on me, the gangly, skinny dustmop that I was.

Make no mistake. I kill mosquitoes without thought or regret. I kill poisonous snakes and spiders because they endanger my family. I wage total war on stinkbugs, and guerrilla warfare on raccoons. I am not the Grizzly Man. I am, however, tempted to hug certain trees, though I refrain due to the poison ivy so prevalent in this area.

The little deaths bring with them — for me — little griefs. I believe these griefs help me and shape me. I am unapologetic about my frequent meditations on them.

But I do dread them. I do hate to see the sad deaths of so many little beautiful things. I grieve for little lonely people in nursing homes or tumbledown shacks or tenement apartments. I grieve for widows and widowers and orphans and bastard children. I grieve for abandoned, kudzu-covered country stores and men standing in lines at soup kitchens with emaciated dogs whose collar & leash is a piece of frayed nylon clothesline. I grieve for grandmothers who have to put back some of their merchandise at the dollar store because they do not have the cash to pay for it, and the young mothers who are trying to absorb the news that the minivan needs a new transmission and that the tests on little Amanda are in and the doctor needs the mother to come to his office today.

Little griefs are part of my fabric. I don’t understand them. I don’t understand most of my life or the threads of it, though I once thought I did. But the solid realization of my lack of understanding brings me a sort of comfort.

Comfort in grief. This is good, and this is a part of it all.

~ S.K. Orr