I was maybe nine or ten years old. It was the most perfect Spring Day imaginable! Bright sun! Deep blue sky! Just a few puffy white clouds! Low humidity! Yellow daffodils, red tulips, the dogwood and the lemon tree chock full of gorgeous blossoms!
I sat all that day on the green lawn of my back yard. I was sitting right next to the edge of the pachysandra surrounding the blooming dogwood. What a lucky boy I was to grow up in such a beautiful back yard! And to be free to sit there all day, happy and peaceful, enjoying the breeze, the bright colors, and the warm weather of the gorgeous Spring.
That day was perhaps the happiest and certainly the most peaceful day I ever have known. How such happiness and peacefulness could have happened I do wonder sometimes, because, you see, I spent the entire day learning about death. Ever since that day I have understood death’s greatest, most peaceful, and happiest secret!
Goldie
Goldie was my pet goldfish. I had bought her months before the arrival of that beautiful Spring Day. I had found Goldie swimming amongst other fish in the big tank at the back of the five and dime. It was love at first sight! I bought Goldie! I think she cost a quarter, or something like that.
I carried Goldie home in a little white container the same as those containers used for rice by Chinese takeout restaurants. After Goldie settled in at home I enjoyed changing the water in her glass bowl. I liked the idea of Goldie enjoying fresh, clean water. I enjoyed feeding Goldie every morning, sprinkling her food on top of the water. I always was delighted to see Goldie swim up to the surface and eat. I loved watching the rhythm of Goldie’s mouth movements and of her gills.
I imagined that Goldie was happy. We couldn’t talk much, of course. After all, she was a goldfish. But I tried every day to take good care of Goldie. And she seemed happy. Or so I imagined.
One day, early in the morning, I went, as usual, to feed Goldie. Oh my! Goldie was sick! She was floating on her side at the top of the water! Her mouth and her gills still were moving, but she was just lying there, on her side. Goldie didn’t look happy any more. Not at all happy! Not at all!
I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know how to help Goldie!
The next morning Goldie still looked pretty much the same, still on her side, still at the surface of the water, still not swimming, but at least I still could hope for Goldie’s recovery because her mouth and her gills still were moving rhythmically.
The following morning, however, Goldie was gone! I had raced from bed to bowl wanting to check on Goldie as soon as I awakened. And there she was. What was left of her. Not moving! Not breathing! Still all gorgeously gold colored, conspicuously floating in the clear water!
I watched quietly for awhile as Goldie floated, perfectly still.
Again, I didn’t know what to do! It was my very first experience with the death of a creature that I loved.
The Funeral
I decided that I should bury Goldie and that she should have a funeral.
Of course, a funeral needed a headstone.
I found five popsicle sticks. We had popsicle sticks so we could make our own popsicles in the freezer. I laid the five sticks out flat on the counter, and I taped the sticks together. The central stick was raised slightly above the sticks on each side of the central stick, and those, in turn, were slightly higher than the two outside sticks. Goldie had her tombstone, with a decorative series of arches along the top.
I used a red pen to write Goldie’s name on her tombstone.
I went outside and looked around at the truly gorgeous day. I decided to bury my gorgeous golden fish in the shade amongst the pachysandra underneath the gorgeous blooming dogwood.
Using a trowel from the garage, the burial took only a moment. I pushed the popsicle tombstone down into the earth at the head of Goldie’s newly occupied grave. And there I stayed, literally all day until dinner, sitting, meditating, next to Goldie.
Meditation
The perfect Spring day was so beautiful! I sat immersed in perfect beauty! Goldie somehow still was there too, despite that somehow else Goldie also was gone.
Eventually I realized that the gorgeous, brightly colored flowers also were going to die. And soon! The blossoms would fall from the dogwood. No more red tulips or yellow daffodils, at least not until next year.
As my meditation continued, I realized that, eventually, the dogwood itself, and the lemon tree, and the grass, and the hedge -- all these were going. Amidst an absolutely perfect day, I knew they all still were going soon. I knew it would happen. Their deaths would come as no surprise, but as part and parcel of the peaceful perfection of everything.
Suddenly I knew -- I just knew -- that death would claim, not only Goldie, not only the Spring, not only the flowers, and not only the other plants and the trees. I knew that everything was going. Other animals. My parents. My brother. Our backyard. Our house. Our town. Our entire country. The world. Everything was sure to go!
Yes! Even me myself! We all were going! And soon! And it was no surprise! And it was the most beautiful of all days. Perfect weather! Perfect flowers! Perfect movement! All going soon, first one, then another, then another. Perfect co-ordination! Perfect realization! Crystal clarity! Gorgeous golden fish! Gorgeous deep blue sky! Everything changing, coming into being, and passing away! No surprise!
The peacefulness of the meditation vision lies beyond the province of mere words. There was a sense of completeness. A sense of total mutual participation. Huge, overwhelming, repeating waves of peacefulness and joy -- both in the mutual participation and in the mutual expectancy! No surprises any more! No surprises for anybody or anything. Crystal clarity!
The Fun Police
The next morning I went back outside to sit again in front of the dogwood tree and next to Goldie. The weather again was gorgeous. The red, yellow, pink, and white blooms still were super colorful. The sky still was the same deep blue. But this time I knew, and my knowledge made everything still more poignant, still more exceedingly gorgeous. I continued happy and peaceful, filled with joy and belonging and acceptance.
It wasn’t long, however, until my Mom joined me in the back yard. Not a word of sympathy about Goldie being gone! Not a word about the weather, the sky, the flowers, or about any of the beauty spread thickly throughout! Not a word about our mutual participation with everything in the great comings and goings of the Universe!
Instead came a lecture. I wasn’t to let myself remain in the back yard, overcome by sadness and depression resulting from my pet’s death. Goldie was only a fish. There were plenty more fish. I had better go back inside the house, find something to do, move on.
My Mom pulled my arm. She pulled me away from the peace of the beautiful back yard, away from the sky and away from the flowers, back into the house. Never will I forget those moments with Goldie! But I can’t remember anything about whatever it was that I did when I got back into the house. Homework, maybe.
I still love you, Goldie! Thank you forever for everything you taught me! You were just a pet goldfish. But even now, all these decades later, what you taught me those gorgeous Spring days remains the foundation of all the beauty, all the peace, and all the joy in my life! And nothing else ever has mattered very much in comparison.
A Few Short Years Later
I was a junior in high school. My Dad was in his early fifties. A commotion in my parents’ bedroom woke me up earlier than usual. I ran down the hall to my parents’ room to see what was happening. Dad was having a heart attack! We called the ambulance. By the time the ambulance arrived Dad seemed better. He even cracked some stupid joke, looking at me as his stretcher was pushed into the ambulance.
The next day, Mom returned from her conference with the doctors at the hospital. One glance at Mom was all I needed. As Mom got out of her car in the driveway I instantly could tell that she really was upset. Not a heart attack, she said. Instead, cancer. She was almost crying. A huge cancer had grown out of Dad’s lungs and had encased Dad’s heart. The doctors had done an exploratory operation, Mom said, but they sewed Dad back together. The doctors couldn’t do anything that really would help. Dad was going to die! Maybe radiation could keep Dad around a bit longer.
“It was so surprising,” Mom said. The neighbors came, one after another. They brought food, and other gifts. Dad still was in the hospital. “It was so surprising,” everyone said. Everyone was so upset! Nobody had any peace! Except me. And I didn’t understand why the others didn’t seem to know what I knew. I didn’t understand why nobody else seemed to have any peace. I wasn’t surprised about my Dad. Not one tiny bit! But about my Mom and the neighbors -- Mom’s and the neighbors’ surprise was surprising -- truly surprising! Where had they been when they were kids, when they had their first experiences with death? I was still a kid myself. I didn’t know how to talk with them. I didn’t know what to say. But I knew that I knew what I knew about death, and I knew that my knowledge was peaceful, utterly peaceful, participatory, and accepting.
My Dad didn’t die right away. Instead, he lingered and lingered and lingered. More than a year went by. Dad lost weight. All his weight. As Dad got down to skin and bones I wrote to the college to which I had been admitted. I told them I couldn’t come after all. There was no money any more. Dad wasn’t working any more. He couldn’t.
The college’s unexpected reply was to increase my financial aid so that everything was paid. How utterly remarkable! I went off to begin college as Dad still lingered on, suffering, I am sure. When I returned home for Thanksgiving, I saw Dad’s brother, Ben, waiting for me on the platform as I stepped off the train in the morning of Thanksgiving Day itself. Yet again, one glance told me everything! I knew Dad was gone! Ben told me that it had happened the day before. Dad finally slipped away. Mom was holding him. The family decided not to tell me. They wanted me to travel in anticipation of the family’s holiday gathering and not in anticipation of Dad’s death. My family didn’t want me to be upset. But I was neither upset nor surprised.
The neighbors came again. They brought more food, more condolences. Droves of neighbors came calling. Everyone came. I knew they were trying to be kind, to be respectful of my father. But there was no peace. The house always was full of callers both during the day and into the evening. Everybody said they were so surprised. My Dad had been so young! I wasn’t surprised. Not one bit. Again, however, I didn’t understand other people’s surprise. Again, I didn’t know what to say.
Dad had a private funeral, just Mom, and my brother, and me. And the Pastor. And my Mom’s friend from bridge club who owned the funeral home. Again, I didn’t know what to say. I myself had so much peace. But everybody else seemed upset, and I didn’t understand why.
Dad was cremated. Mom and my brother and I went back home. The neighbors stopped coming. Nobody mentioned my Dad any more. Nobody mentioned their surprise any more. It was like nothing at all had happened, like Dad never had been alive. The beautiful truth of death was set aside.
I returned to college to study philosophy and religion. The Dean wrote to all my professors, telling them that my father had died. All the professors took me aside and talked with me gently. They all were so careful in how they spoke with me! They all said they were surprised. I was peaceful! I wasn’t surprised by Dad’s passing. I knew at the time he passed and I still know now that my Dad is peaceful. And I still am peaceful, too, because of what I learned about death from Goldie on that gorgeous Spring day many years ago: I, too, am going soon! And so are we all!
Tom Miller
Written in the gorgeous desert at
San Luis Rio Colorado
Sonora, Mexico
September 30, 2017