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Crows The Spiritual Traveler
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It
was 1996, about two years before my father's death. He had
been ill for three years already, and I was preoccupied with his
care. To be more accurate, my mother was the primary care
giver, but she really wasn't consistently up to the task, and in many
ways I had to take care of both of them. I was also teaching
part-time at Henry Ford Community College, in Dearborn, about a forty
minute commute from Ann Arbor. I taught early in the
morning, and usually returned immediately after my class was
over. It was a brisk January morning, and as I turned from
I-94 onto Ann Arbor-Saline Road, it occurred to me that I could stop
off and pick up something from a storage locker that I rented
nearby. So I turned left onto Lorch Road, instead of right
towards my apartment in the center of town. The little-used
road led to the storage facility, almost within sight of the
highway. Melted snow lay in patches by the road, and I
noticed a thick flock of crows circling overhead on the left-hand
side. It didn't take me long to retrieve what I wanted from
the locker. Doubling back on the deserted road, I noticed
the crows again, just up ahead, and now on the near side of the
road. I wasn't in a hurry that day, so I decided to stop and
investigate.
I got
out of the car and saw almost immediately what it was all
about. A little rabbit was sitting by the side of the road,
at almost exactly the point where the grass left off and the shoulder
began. It was upright, with its paws stretched out in front
of it. Just sitting
there. Awake. Alert. I came closer,
expecting it to bolt, but it just sat there, staring straight ahead,
taking hardly any notice of me. Then I saw that its hind
legs were splayed out in back of it, obviously broken. The
crows were overhead, some hovering, and a few hopping on their elastic
legs only a few feet behind. Then I saw why. In
the middle of the rabbit's back, there was a gaping wound like a
crater. Horrified, I watched as one of the crows hopped
right up behind the rabbit, and took a few vigorous pecks from its
living flesh. The rabbit just sat there, enduring it, with
only a few flinches passing over its face.
I didn't know what to do. The rabbit was being eaten
alive. It occurred to me that I had two
choices. Either I could pack it quickly into the trunk of my
car and take it to a vet, or I could get back in my car and drive
on. I looked closer at the wound. The hole went
right down to the spine. No vet could save an animal in that
condition. The most that could be done would be to put it to
sleep right away. I thought of what a messy scenario it
might be to put it in the trunk. It might thrash around in a
terrified state, getting blood all over. It might resist my
attempt to grab it, and try to bite. I looked at it
now. There was something extremely dignified about the way
it was taking it. It seemed to be in a trance-like
state. It was meeting its fate with an attitude of
acceptance equal to that of the Buddha. Possibly it didn't
even feel any pain. And I planned to despoil this natural
event, to barge in clumsily with my heroic notions of 'rescuing'
it? I would probably just end up making a
mess. So I got in my car and drove away.
My place was just a few minutes away, but even before I got there I was
already having doubts. Did I do the right
thing? At that moment it was still sitting there, being
pecked to death. I couldn't get the image out of my mind,
and I wondered about the meaning of the experience. Several
times, I had the urge to get back in my car, go to the spot, and
'rescue' the animal. But now it seemed too
late. So I did nothing. A few days later, I was
returning from work at about the same time. I took the same
exit ramp off the expressway. Suddenly, I had the urge to go
back to the same spot. It was as if I wanted to go back to
assure myself that the rabbit was now dead and gone. In my
imagination, it was still by the side of the road, being eaten by those
crows. I felt that only seeing the remains of the corpse, or
the roadside completely bare, would dispel that image. As I
neared the stoplight at the end of the exit ramp, I got into the left
lane. The light was red, the intersection
deserted. I flicked on my left turn signal, came to a
complete stop, and waited for the light to change.
Suddenly, I felt a tremendous impact behind me, and a pickup truck
careened off to my right, and continued through to the other side of
the intersection. I got out of the car and looked at my
rear. It was completely smashed in. The pickup
had come to a halt on the shoulder of the entrance ramp,
opposite. I got back in my car and drove it carefully into
the median of the intersection, put on my emergency signal, and got out
of the car, expecting to have a word with the driver of the
pick-up. As I got out, however, I saw the pick-up suddenly
rev-up, spin around and head off down the entrance ramp and back onto
the highway. In a few seconds, it was gone. Amid
cursing the driver, I had the feeling that this, too, had a meaning,
and that it was connected with the rabbit. I had gotten into
the left-hand lane, intending to revisit that spot. I had
gotten rear-ended, out of the blue! There must be a
connection. I decided that it had something to do with my
second-guessing myself. "You can't go back. That
was the message," I thought to myself. The decision to leave
the rabbit by the roadside was neither the wrong nor the right
decision. It was just the decision I had made at the time,
and having made it, there was no point in stewing about it, or
replaying the scenario over in mind.
A year later, I was living in Amman, Jordan, and had gotten friendly
with a young American named Brian who was working at the Jordan Times,
the country's English-language newspaper. Brian had recently
graduated from Brown University, but hailed from Alabama. He
was into punk music, and walked around in ragged clothes with a safety
pin in his ear. He inhabited a cold, gloomy, bedraggled apartment in
the middle of the city, just behind the central bus
station. His roommate was a statuesque young woman from the
south of England, named Tamsin. I used to visit them on
Thursdays, which was their day off. I would come about ten
in the evening, and we would sit and talk until two or three in the
morning. Whenever I walked in, no matter how cold the
apartment, Tamsin would always be barefoot, wearing only jeans and a
single threadbare sweater. Brian would drink arak, they both
would smoke, and I would nibble on whatever they had lying around while
the TV flickered in the corner of the room.
One evening I was in a talkative mood and started telling them the
story about the rabbit and the crows. As soon as I started
describing the scene, I noticed Tamsin wincing. I felt
encouraged to tell the story with a bit of flourish and dramatic
effect, and I noticed with satisfaction as I built up to the conclusion
that both Brian and Tamsin were leaning a bit more forward on the
couch. The atmosphere in the dingy apartment was
hushed. They were waiting for the punch
line. When I ended with the moral about not looking back,
though, they seemed a little disenchanted. "I thought the
meaning of it had something to do with the rabbit's hind legs," Tamsin
said. "You got rear-ended, and the rabbit's hind legs were
broken. That's what I thought the connection
was."
"I didn't think it had anything to do with that," I
said. "It was just about not looking back. That's
the way I had interpreted it, anyway." But Tamsin's reaction
made me reconsider my own interpretation of the incident. I
began to wonder if I had overlooked something about it.
Shortly after this encounter, I was forced to return to the
States. My father's situation had been
deteriorating. It was mid-December. I had been in
touch with my sister via e-mail about my possible return, but had been
very indecisive about my exact day of departure, and kept my sister
hopping with all sorts of changes in plans. Now I had
decided, though. I would fly to Boston on the 15th, make a
direct connection to Florida, stay in my mother's tiny condo in
Marathon for about 10 days, and then get back to Michigan at the end of
the month. I had booked a non-refundable ticket at the last
minute at a good price. The penalty for changing the date of
departure, they told me, was $75. I had kept my sister
informed, but now came sudden word from her: my father was on his last
legs, the doctors said he possibly had only a few days to
live. Of course it was 'my' decision whether or not to go to
Florida. I replied to my sister via e-mail, asking if she
intended to go to Michigan. No, she was staying put, she
said.
I decided to make the decision once I got to Logan
Airport. Once there, I called my mother and asked what she
wanted me to do. "I think it would be best for you to come
here for a couple of days, just to assess the situation," she
said. "If his condition stabilizes, then you can go on to
Florida. I checked on the price of a ticket that would take
me immediately to Detroit. It was almost $1000. I
called my mother back. "Well, we're spending money right and
left these days. It doesn't matter." So I bought
the ticket and flew in to Detroit. When I got there, I was
expecting the worst. But my father was sitting upright in
bed when I walked in, greeted me cheerily, had a firm handshake, and we
sat and talked for hours. He didn't seem in much different
shape from when I had last seen him five months before. The
next morning, the physical therapist called as he was sitting in the
living room, surrounded by health care workers and hospice
volunteers. I picked up the phone and relayed the
message. "She wants to know if she can come over and put you
through some exercises." He shook his head. Then
I looked at the others, and their heads were all nodding up and
down. So I told the physical therapist, "Why don't you come
and see what you can do with him." She came over, and
exercised him quite a bit.
In the middle of the day, I had to take my mother on an
errand. We left my father in the care of a volunteer, and
returned about an hour later. He was in his easy chair,
apparently sound asleep, except that we couldn't rouse
him. We sat there for a long time, just looking at him,
wondering if this was the end, if he was going into a coma, and if my
previous conversation was the last I would ever have with
him. In the evening, the social worker came, and said if he
stayed in that state, he would somehow have to be moved to his
bed. She suggested we try it ourselves. I got
hold of him under one arm, and she under the other. We
lifted him to his feet, and walked him to his bed. He was
putting one foot in front of the other, walking, but he was fast
asleep! After a few more hours, he simply woke up.
That evening, I had to decide whether or not to go to
Florida. I knew that I was taking a chance of not being
there when he died. My mother urged me to go.
"If I go," I told her, "and he's still around when I get back, then
you'll be in the same position that I'm in now. If you want
to go to Florida in January, you'll be taking the same
chance. Will you go if it comes down to that?"
"Yes, I will," she replied.
"Well, I'll sleep on it," I told her.
I was staying with a friend, went over to her place very late in the
evening, and fell into bed with the mental resolution that I would have
the answer in the morning. Sure enough, as soon as I woke up
the next day, it was clear in my mind that I had to go to
Florida. If I didn't, I would be asking my mother in January
to do something I wasn't willing to do now. It would be
hypocritical of me. As soon as this realization came to me,
I had a feeling that this was the point at which I had to let go of my
father.
Then I remembered the rabbit and the crows. The full meaning
of the incident hit me. It had been about my father, the
whole time! The rabbit represented my father and the crows
the relentless force of nature that decreed his time on earth to be
nearing an end. My position was that of a spectator, and my
lesson was to learn not to interfere in this process. My
choice had been the right one-to leave the rabbit by the side of the
road. By stopping and watching, I had contributed my
presence to the situation. I had shown my respect for life
in the face of the spectacle of death, and that was the most that I
could do.
My
father lived for another year after that. There was more
letting go that I had to do. I was with him during his last
moments at the hospital. I remember the response of the
muscles in his hand as I held it in mine, the stoicism, calm, and
weakness of that I felt in it, and the pang of emotion I experienced as
he acknowledged his impending death. He told me he was
going, and I had no words to contradict him.
In his last words, he muttered something about Prometheus being nailed
to the cross on Mt. Caucasus, and I had a sudden sense of the death
experience as one in which the departing person is literally strung
between heaven and earth. A quote from my religion's
scripture came to me: "The world is sustained by every action, whose
sole object is sacrifice," and I thought that at the time of death, it
must be that each one of us becomes the sacrifice. I thought
again of the rabbit whose living flesh was food for the crows, and as
my father passed away before me, I was overcome by the heroism of each
being who makes that transit, as great as that of Prometheus or even
Christ. |
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Date Submitted:
2001-06-17 00:00:00 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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