Deer
(Day Twenty-Six)
I used to close my eyes whenever we passed something dead on the road, like I was saying my own kind of silent prayer to the animal's memory. I wouldn't think any words -- just close my eyes for a few seconds and feel sad in my stomach. I have this memory -- I don't know if it's real or something my childhood concocted -- of riding with my parents on the interstate and seeing a puppy fall out (or thrown?) from a car window. It sounds too horrible to have actually happened, which is why I want to have imagined it, but I remember my mom's gasp and the quiet of the minutes after. I don't know if that's when I started my moments of silence for the dead bodies I passed on the road, or if that's something separate, but that black puppy falling is an image that always lives somewhere in my head.
Sometime recently I noticed I don't close my eyes for roadkill anymore. I guess everything becomes ordinary if you see it often enough. But this morning on the way to work I saw one of the neighborhood deer -- one of the five that munches on bushes near subdivision entrances, that taunts Clyde from beyond the fence in our back yard, that has always impressed me with how carefully they cross the road -- dead on the shoulder, and I wanted to pull over, close my eyes, and hurt a little.
The deer are one of the things I love about living in our area -- we're so close to businesses, and interstates, and stores, but on our little road, there's still this feel of wilderness and forests. I love driving home and slowing down to see if the deer are in their normal spots; I even love it when they surprise me with the shine of their eyes in my headlights. It feels like leaving the busy world for a little piece of sanctuary. When I saw that brown body on the side of the road, I was torn between anger at whoever had killed it -- though I know it isn't too hard to drive too fast on these narrow roads -- and such sadness for my little deer family, who I imagined desolate and comforting each other somewhere in the woods.
Part of me knows that eventually the deer will be gone. There will be too many people, too many buildings, too many cars. But I don't want them to go. That's the way of everything, isn't it? Everything goes away, and most of it you don't want to go. If you think about it too much, it becomes impossible to live.
It reminds me of a night over a year ago, when Michael and I were getting ready for bed and nudging Clyde over so we could get under the covers. Clyde started to roll off his back and suddenly let out a high-pitched, panicked noise, like something was hurting. We thought his collar was pinching him, so I unhooked it, and he stopped. The relief surging through me was almost paralyzing. And then he tried to get up again, and again he started crying, a horrible, out-of-control yelp.
Panicking, myself, I smoothed the hair on his head, not knowing what to do -- and he stopped. He got up, jumped off the bed, and was fine.
Me, I was not fine. I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and cried. I remember thinking, "How can anyone do this? How can anyone care about anyone or anything when at any moment something bad can happen?"
Clyde didn't have any problems after that, and the vet thought it might just have been a pinched nerve. But good lord. It's incapacitating to think of all the bad things that can happen. How does anyone do it? How do we all live, day after day? How do we enjoy anything when it can be taken away?
I don't have the answer to that question. But I think it has something to do with the balance of happy, good, beautiful moments, and how those moments wouldn't be as happy, good, or beautiful if you didn't know there was the sad, bad, and ugly. It has something to do with the fact that most days, bad things don't happen. Most days, the only bad is your head making you anxious and worried about things or events that are only possibilities, not fact. It has to do with the fact that most nights, you fall asleep with your husband curled around you and your dog happy at your feet, and you're happy, too.
And what's possible sadness in the face of that? Would we give up all the good if it meant never having the bad? Those are the moments when you should close your eyes and have a moment of silence, a moment of happiness and respect for the good and the joy that life brings you that balances out the sad. There's beauty in both.
I used to close my eyes whenever we passed something dead on the road, like I was saying my own kind of silent prayer to the animal's memory. I wouldn't think any words -- just close my eyes for a few seconds and feel sad in my stomach. I have this memory -- I don't know if it's real or something my childhood concocted -- of riding with my parents on the interstate and seeing a puppy fall out (or thrown?) from a car window. It sounds too horrible to have actually happened, which is why I want to have imagined it, but I remember my mom's gasp and the quiet of the minutes after. I don't know if that's when I started my moments of silence for the dead bodies I passed on the road, or if that's something separate, but that black puppy falling is an image that always lives somewhere in my head.
Sometime recently I noticed I don't close my eyes for roadkill anymore. I guess everything becomes ordinary if you see it often enough. But this morning on the way to work I saw one of the neighborhood deer -- one of the five that munches on bushes near subdivision entrances, that taunts Clyde from beyond the fence in our back yard, that has always impressed me with how carefully they cross the road -- dead on the shoulder, and I wanted to pull over, close my eyes, and hurt a little.
The deer are one of the things I love about living in our area -- we're so close to businesses, and interstates, and stores, but on our little road, there's still this feel of wilderness and forests. I love driving home and slowing down to see if the deer are in their normal spots; I even love it when they surprise me with the shine of their eyes in my headlights. It feels like leaving the busy world for a little piece of sanctuary. When I saw that brown body on the side of the road, I was torn between anger at whoever had killed it -- though I know it isn't too hard to drive too fast on these narrow roads -- and such sadness for my little deer family, who I imagined desolate and comforting each other somewhere in the woods.
Part of me knows that eventually the deer will be gone. There will be too many people, too many buildings, too many cars. But I don't want them to go. That's the way of everything, isn't it? Everything goes away, and most of it you don't want to go. If you think about it too much, it becomes impossible to live.
It reminds me of a night over a year ago, when Michael and I were getting ready for bed and nudging Clyde over so we could get under the covers. Clyde started to roll off his back and suddenly let out a high-pitched, panicked noise, like something was hurting. We thought his collar was pinching him, so I unhooked it, and he stopped. The relief surging through me was almost paralyzing. And then he tried to get up again, and again he started crying, a horrible, out-of-control yelp.
Panicking, myself, I smoothed the hair on his head, not knowing what to do -- and he stopped. He got up, jumped off the bed, and was fine.
Me, I was not fine. I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and cried. I remember thinking, "How can anyone do this? How can anyone care about anyone or anything when at any moment something bad can happen?"
Clyde didn't have any problems after that, and the vet thought it might just have been a pinched nerve. But good lord. It's incapacitating to think of all the bad things that can happen. How does anyone do it? How do we all live, day after day? How do we enjoy anything when it can be taken away?
I don't have the answer to that question. But I think it has something to do with the balance of happy, good, beautiful moments, and how those moments wouldn't be as happy, good, or beautiful if you didn't know there was the sad, bad, and ugly. It has something to do with the fact that most days, bad things don't happen. Most days, the only bad is your head making you anxious and worried about things or events that are only possibilities, not fact. It has to do with the fact that most nights, you fall asleep with your husband curled around you and your dog happy at your feet, and you're happy, too.
And what's possible sadness in the face of that? Would we give up all the good if it meant never having the bad? Those are the moments when you should close your eyes and have a moment of silence, a moment of happiness and respect for the good and the joy that life brings you that balances out the sad. There's beauty in both.