Beliefs
Staring at the Sun -- Overcoming the Terror of Death
I'd been on the road for over a week. With little to complain about I took my time. "No hurry" I kept saying to myself.
My van's engine hummed and at over fifteen miles per gallon, I figured driving all night would get me to Las Vegas in less than a day. Vegas accounted for my fifth job in two weeks, a record for the year. I figured the entire trip would take me over 2,300 miles of the United States.
Vegas promised another $1,400 for a days work, probably all day. I could drop my solid waste at the xxxy landfill. Then head home. I needed a good hot shower in my own house. The ol' lady would have my favorite towels hanging and fresh tuna sandwiches ready. She would wake me when she came in the door, and then I'd dose off. I never slept well without her presence. My thoughts remained on the next two or three days. A bank account once in red now galloped into a deep and healthy black. "Its been a good trip."
I slowed at the xx and z junction. July's full-moon helped brighten road-side object. Then I saw a young man hitchhiking with a large dkdkdk. I felt sorry for the dog, knowing the Texas sun would drain his energy in a short while. The young man I took for a hippy of some sort.
Against my own "no hitch-hiker rule," I stopped and picked them up.
"Hi" the young man shouted much more loudly than necessary as he opened the passenger's door.
"Slide the cargo door open. There's plenty of soft towels for your dog to sleep on."
The dog jumped into the van, showing me he had plenty of experience jumping in and out of vans. He weighed over 70 pounds, easily. As a xxx he brought that joyful enthusiasm so customary to his breed. All laughs and hugs. His blond hair nearly matched Pete's long pony tail's dirty blood look. This dog and his master were on the road for a long time, I surmised. They had a strong, sweaty odor between them. The dog's dirt, the owner's sweat, and my day's on the road now mixed into a forbidding fragrance to anyone daring to come close.
"Pete" the young man offered his name.
"Eddie," I replied. His grasp reminded me of a tree-cutter's hands. Strong, thick, rough, and more than capable of taking care of its owner. He looked much larger sitting on my right than standing near the xxxx'as corner in the moonlight. "He's "six-three" I thought to myself. "He could keep up with the Samoans on a filthy house cleanup job," I thought.
"Where ya heading?" I asked with my least curious tone. I could see that I placed myself in a bad way if he wanted my van. With forty-years his senior, no way would my heart could keep up with this kid's strength, I could see.
"San Diego," Pete replied. Then he added that he and Jake, the dog, were on their way back from his brother's funeral. Pete explained that his brother had recently died on riding his motor cycle just outside of Jackson, Florida. His brother had just returned from Iraq after his last tour with the marines. A "grunt," his brother didn't know when to take life easy, I gathered from Pete's tone. "Sam's" wife wanted me to attend since she had never seen me.
She also wanted Sam's dog to go to a family member rather than a pound. She would enlist in the navy soon, as his story began to reveal more family information, I could tell he liked to talk. I could also tell that the dog meant a lot to this young man; ?he's all I have left of my brother."
I also learned that his brother had married Mandy before his last tour in Iraq. The two had met in Jacksonville, Florida a few months before Sam's deployment. Mandy held herself afloat while working as a pole dancer in a "beer joint" in Jefferson. Her parents married late in life and by the time she graduated from high school, she became an orphan. With a mature appearance landing the pole dancer job came easily enough, but convincing the "Pink Rhino's" owner to give her the job took some doing. She made good money at it, and here she met Sam, an off duty marine out to relax on leave, before Iraq.
Mandy's situation pointed to the navy as a last resort. Sam and Mandy hit it off and before she had finished her first month pole dancing, she and Sam were married. Sam saw no problem supporting her with his military benefits, so they married with hopes for a bright future. Mandy waited for Sam's return and studied nursing at a local college. Within a week of Sam's return died on a rainy morning because of 'excessive speed," a Florida State Trooper wrote. Mandy was unable to view Sam's body, owing to its horrific injuries.
Lucky for Mandy that she chose to sleep in that Saturday morning; usually she rode on Sam's motorcycle and loved it. Mandy, according to Pete, had lived with Sam for less than three months before his last assignment to Iraq. Their marriage lasted fifteen months, in total. With the little money Sam saved, Mandy had enough to cremate Sam, pay two months rent, and that was that.
Mandy said she could have lived with my brother forever. "We both liked living together and joked around together." We both "loved science fiction, especially Star Trek's The Next Generation." Pete also related that Mandy stood a head shorter than he and his brother. Her pale, white face looked almost almond shape. She wore her black hair long. After Sam's ashes were buried in the Jefferson County cemetery, Mandy had her hair cropped just below her ears. Pete "knew then" it was time to "hit the road."
With their good-byes said, Jake the dog exchanged hands. Both were teary-eyed. Both promised to keep in touch, and neither knew why they should bother. They were strangers connected by a spouse and brothers death cleanup administration.
The dog did not fit into Pete's plans, Pete explained, but he could not abandon Sam's, which belonged to Mandy too. Mandy and Sam adopted Jake from a pound right after their marriage. Sam wanted Mandy to have company and a "barking security alarm." The dog turned out to mean something far greater than breathing security. Mandy sent many pictures and videos of Jake's antics. Few would have wanted more from a canine.
By the time Pete unloaded all of this information I could tell his mourning would go on for some time. His tone hinted that I had become a welcomed sounding board. Within sixty miles of xxx crossroad, I had heard the story of a lovers' tragedy and Pete's role in picking up the pieces.
"Mandy took Sam's death really hard and I kept quiet most of the time." "I helped her out because that's what Sam wanted if something happened to him in Iraq."
Then Pete shared some ideas the he and Sam had shared. Before Sam left for Iraq on his first tour, they had agreed on their ideas about life and death.
"We may overcome the terror of death. We cannot overcome the anxiety of death. We're all condemned in this way to death as all humanity experiences this universal anxiety," Pete related in a low tone.
"O' boy, I thought to myself. I picked up a philosopher."
And in fact, he knew something about what he then unloaded on me.
As a result of my crime scene cleanup company and academic interests, I encouraged Pete to tell his story. And stories he had. Pete too had spent time in the military as a marine in force-recon. He promised himself that he would go to college and learn something special. Now here he rode next to me some six years after his discharge. Now he intended to begin a PhD program in philosophy.
With that said, he had my full attention. I hoped his company would help me stay awake; I needed to start work in Vegas pronto. He more than picked my attention. I would not sleep this night.
"Thinking about death can enliven us and give us different thoughts and feelings about death. Relieving anxiety follows."
A low grain anxiety compared to terror makes a big difference in the way we think, in the way we live.
People with terminal cancer must talk about death. Some people suddenly begin to change. They experience an awakening experience, personal growth. I've seen this in my mother. She's not far from the end. Talking helps her. I did not want to leave her for Sam's funeral. I'm glad I did, but just the same, she needs me now.
I related that the "terror of death shows itself in our lives." I've seen it in my business.
Pete then asked, "By the way, what is your business."
"Crime scene cleanup, blood cleanup, suicide cleanup, unattended death cleanup, trauma cleanup, biohazard cleanup, you name it, I'll do it."
"Wow," Pete spoke out loudly.
"And that's what you're doing now?"
"Yep, I'm on my way to Vegas for my last job on a two week tour, as I put it." Now I thought that maybe Pete might like to help on the last steps of this vegas crime scene homicide cleanup.
"Then you must give some thought to death too."
Now Pete let the cat out of the bag. He must have dwelled on death from his combat days. He, like so many other combat veterans were condemned to learning about death's mighty fortress of unknowns.
What I learned in Iraq I told to Sam. He should have listened to me, though. But we all go our own way. Sam's dare-devil stunts finally caught up with him. I thought he might not make it back from Iraq. Then this motorcycle thing. It's almost too much to believe. He's gone. My mother's sick, and Mandy's on her way to the Navy.
"It's all about our own mortality --- pointless, meaningless, more precious; what do we dwell upon, ignore, bury deeply within our consciousness. It's all there every day of our lives. We glaze over it, but it's there."
Now Pete's intellectual role went on and on. I didn't want to interrupt and made agreement and acknowledged that I heard his propositions and musings.
"Plato and Socrates talked about life after death. Others believe in nothing. Me, I keep an open mind and I don't mind one way or the other. For certain, Sam's exit went the way he lived, fast and exciting."
I related that suicide cleanup often lead me to write about theories of suicide and a bit on the history of suicide. I explained that white males suffer suicide about 73 percent of the time in the US and elsewhere in the world. Mostly protestants, there's no guarantee death won't visit via suicide, given the circumstances. I explained that older white men tend to lead the suicide pack. Often enough to remember their act, I find that they're alone in the world. Nearly destitute, and if they have a dog or cat, usually a dog, they shoot the dog first. Usually they place a towel or jacket over the dog. Then they do their own self-murder.
"Religious systems tell us that the fear of death is the mother of all religions. Entire cultures based their though's on an eternal afterlife." Pete then sat quietly for about ten minutes. Jake got up and stuck his hugh head between our gray, vinyl seats. "Sit Jake," Pete commanded with a quiet voice. He then picked up a new theme in his presentation of religion and death.
"I've studied .Mohammedanism and I think it gets a bad rap in the press. Anytime Christians or Jews critique Mohammedanism there's a strong bias. They have it in for socialism in general, and Mohammedasism has a socialist history in its growth. I don't know enogh to say much about it, though."
The intelligent critiques of Monotheism usually point out the role of polytheism's major characters' adoption by monotheism. The Muslims have some of this in their big boat. The big boat interpreters usually conform to what we call 'fundamentalism.' The big boat gives the masses their hope, their faith in a hereafter. Their little boat carries a much more eclectic and liberal interpretation of sacred texts.
Critics blame Mohammedanism for so many problems in the middle-east. The Taliban's rigid fundamentalism has profound implications for science and ecology. I refer to the fundamentalists and fellow-travelers as the big-boat. it's hard to tell what's real and what another spin on Western religious bigotry. For certain, the monotheism of Mohammed presents a single God consisting of pure will; personality and will become the same thing. The Divine One is an Infinite Free Will. With t+he God of Mohammed, an inner-directed, willful God allows for humanity's destination to follow proscribed predestination. Input into human affairs remains a secondary attribute of this God. Death comes as it comes, "It is Ahla's will." It's important to keep in mind that 'Ahla" is not the name of the Muslim God.
God's place in the Universe as weill cannot be mentioned. This shows a powerfully reverant religion.
This Will has an arbitrariness about it, 'Alla's Will be done" we hear in as a means of coping with mass deaths. Here will guides itself and humanity without recourse to reason and love. This gives Mohammedanism its arbitrary will, a soothing account of the cosmos for some. Mohammed teaches posits a unity and spirituality of God. What consists of a spiritual unity combines with a numeric unity in so many Muslim artifacts. We find a numerology at times; we find less of a moral unity. This God exists as an abstract spirituality. This abstraction from matter has profound impllications for ecology and the fate of the earth in Muslim science.
The monotheism of the Jews combined justice with will. So we in a single personality, Moses, the giving of God's justice, a guidebook to explaining what God wants. Later, much later, John Milton comes along and tries to explain the ways of God to man. In doing so the justice theme appears. The idea of choice and doing what's right has a big place in the Jewish scheme of things and death. Righteousness gives the Jewish God a willful, other directed judgemental personality.
The Jewish books leave God outside of the world; above all as its Creator and Ruler, above all as its Judge; God becomes a non-participant observer after strong-arming his way into domestic issues among ruling Jews. Once he makes his point, that humanity kills as God commands, we see the Jewish God's role diminished. Mark Twain comes to mind when I think of the Jewish God as 'above' it all. Twain's agnosticism followed a Nostic explanation for a absentee god .
It's important to keep life in perspective as monotheism arose. It gave humanity an easier to manage theology. With the ideas left to us by the Greeks, especially in Africa, a more democratic approach to God seemed to make sense. The Phorohs had a monopoly on God. The Jews carried their own Generalized God into the desert. Then the Christinas arose with their interpretations of monotheism.
The idea that a supreme being remained aloft when humanity needed a more democratic means of believing came with the territory. Now God emerges as an all caring, other-directed Will lending itself to personal relationships. This would bring a revolutionary approach to Plato's realm of being. Later, Thomas Acquinas picks up this thread and the Christian God resurrects to dead into a realm of ideal forms, heaven.
Now God has a place above in the heavns while actually existing within and through humanity. This is the Christian monotheism. Judaism also opposed idolatry and idol-worship, and taught that God was above all, and the maker of the world; but it conceived of God as with man, by his repeated miraculous coming down in prophets,
Plato thought about the nonsense of mortality; this life would be pointless. There's not much very worthwhile; therefore, there's got to be something better. Socrates talks about building a nest for existence The gods are there.
Plato
There's something about mortality, and if you love life, there'll be nothing of you. Nothing that remains. Sow what's it all about?
Twain's God: Here God has no place in our world, or at least, there's no way for anyone to know of a place for a God in our world. Twain's God could care less for humanity or this world, for that matter. In Twain's scheme of things, the monotheist God are bitter, selfish, and war-mongering neurotics. If God exists at all, there's no way of knowing this god. For one good reason, the noise of humanity's minor gods obscures what Twain's God thinks. But it doesn't matter because the real God could care less about humanity; besides there's no way we could ever hope to kow anything about God. God has no personality or other human attributes.
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