Love and Death

Love and Death

A greater spotted woodpecker flew into my window and killed himself on Friday. I opened the door to find the vivid black, red and white corpse lying at my feet. There are windows floor to ceiling in my house wherever I could fit them. I want to feel like I am outside, even when the weather drives us in, which in these isles of rain is far too often. So I have slowly taken out sections of wall and replaced them in glass. That way, I may see nature carrying on the process of creation and destruction and recreation of complexity throughout the day.

Early on we had a few deaths, several chaffinches and some lovely long tailed tits, flew heavenward, convinced they had a new flight path into one and out of another window. I duly stuck falcon-shaped stickers on the glass, which prevented further loss of life. For a long time there have been no casualties, but last week, this lovely, long-beaked creature, dashing and in-command on the bird feeder, hammering out his heart on the wood of ages, died an unfitting death on the stone slabs of my courtyard. 

That same day, in mid-February, after a hoarfrost which lasted till elevenses, I cautiously peeped inside my hive to be attacked and stung in the thigh by one of a very busy group of bees. My friend, a gardener who was with me at the time, commented that I had killed twice that day.

I am not unfamiliar with death. All four of my grandparents have died, and my father. I loved them all. The unremitting nature of death, the no-going backness of it is so unlike most of life. You can usually apologise for a misdeed after the event, fix something you've broken, make good on your errors. Death doesn't work like that. Living creatures have no reboot button. When we say our phone has died, when the battery has run out, we are profoundly wrong. Our phone is very much alive. It just needs charging up. There is no charging up a corpse. 

Until you have experienced this finality, it can be hard to really fathom and comprehend. This is one of the reasons younger adults tend to be more reckless at the invisible edge between life and death, speeding in cars, taking poisonous substances for fun and even fighting each other. Older people for whom death has been more present, are more cautious, not just because their hormones have settled down.

An ex-officer in the army once described to me how occasionally he sent men home, with a madness which had struck them following the death of their comrades. He said, they see it like a video game, and then suddenly, its real.  Death is bizarre especially in the face of love. For a mother, facing the death of her son in a war its particularly incongruous. To spend day after day, hour after hour, nurturing and nourishing a child, only to have them wiped away at the moment they reach their potential. In this way, death and love do truly belong on different planets. It is unfair of evolution to make creatures which care so deeply when death takes so decisively.

Donne said 'Death be not proud', but death I am afraid, is mighty. I will find a way to do almost anything I put my mind to, but I could not blow life back in among the feathers of that lovely bird no matter how much I wanted to. I could not make his heart to beat again, his wings, to fly. The children and I pulled the beautiful scarlet feathers from his belly and head, and the spotted pied feathers from his wings and laid them, reverentially in a fan shaped display in our little family 'natural history museum'.  Now we watch to see who takes his place eating the peanuts. For the moment there are only blue tits. But soon, I am sure, the flashing orange red, the tropical swagger of this species will reappear out there in front of our window to delight and awe us again. For sure enough, the gap will fill and life will give where it has taken away.

Sasha x