Gideon

Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.

- Havelock Ellis (1928), British Physician

Life and death are part of the same cycle with no proper name in English. Every living form has a birth or debut as such. But the living package is tied with a ribbon we call death. Death marks a point of no return, when an organism morphs to an unrecognizable, new form. But there is no end. Energy continues to clump into matter in an endless pattern of birth and reorganization.

Our family German Shepard of five years is bleeding and breathing too slowly, soon he will never wake again. He fought two large dogs and lost. So his body will become brown earth soon. We will plant flowers where he'll lay and remember him next Spring. We will sober as we pass the site and think of how fragile our own forms are and we'll be grateful for this chance we've been given to live life.