Echolocating Death



A couple of months ago on a gorgeous summer evening I had this amazing encounter with a bat.  It really moved me so I did what most ridiculous people do these days and I posted on social media.

“I just happened upon a bat trapped in my living room. I was so startled I dropped the hummus I was carrying. Swiftly, I fully opened the outside door, leaving the lights off and lay down on my back to watch echolocation in action. What a perfectly elegant creature... Swooping, signaling, receiving and exiting. No drama. They are quiet, gentle animals and I’m thrilled that they’re dwelling near my house”

There were a great deal of “likes” and support for my statement but one woman asked me later, “How could you do that?”  Confused I asked her what she meant and she replied, “Most people panic and freak out. Even the ones that don’t freak out definitely do not see it as something amazing or beautiful.” 

I thought about this before I replied to her.  Granted, I was looking for a few props on social media—everyone does or you would feel no desire to post.  But, I didn’t see the act as something that was extraordinary; it was more to give an example of a state of mind that is possible when encountering a bat.

I replied, “Oh, I have loved bats since my earliest memory… When I was just three years old I used to peel back the wallpaper in this old abandoned house to watch the bats sleeping all nestled together during the day…. At the same age I impulsively licked blood from a dead bat that my father had killed because he couldn't get it out of our little camp in Maine. (My mother, mortified, rang the doctor, who was equally mortified, but told her to give me some milk and bread or absorb any lingering.... blood? I don't know. It was the 80's) As an adult I educated people about the benefits of bats to farmers and their work as pollinators and organic pest control. I have held them, weighed them and tagged them as a volunteer for the Fish and Wildlife Department. In short, I know enough about them that I am not scared of them.” 

I am a death doula and a funeral celebrant. I have been a Hospice volunteer, a nurse assistant, I have bathed and dressed the dead, and I have sat awake at night, for hours by myself with a corpse at Buddhist funerals.  The work and experience is great and sharing what I have learned with others has turned into one of the primary purposes of my life.  And, the more I study death and dying, the more alive I feel and the larger appreciation that I have for my life and all of life.

 I can’t say that studying death alone has made me feel more comfortable with my own death… I believe that is a kind of internal love for oneself that one has to develop from a very deep place- it doesn’t come from study. But, it has allowed me to have the confidence to talk about death, to touch death, to become as familiar with death as possible and to encourage others to be more empathetic toward themselves and each other- because death comes to everyone. And, like the little brown bat who consumes literally thousands of  insects in one night which is a grand benefit to humans, so too are the decaying trees that have fallen and the animal corpses in the forest that enrich the earth for new growth to come forth… And, should we choose a natural or green burial, our bodies too can contribute to growing new life. If you study these things, it will become clear that although both bats and death can be scary they are both necessary for life. 

I will not know what it is like to die myself until I am fully participating. But, it is my wish that I will meet death with curious awe and a feeling of humble admiration for something that is devoid of human understanding. I hope a kind of comforting and wise echolocation will engulf my being as I move from life to death into the unknown.






Note: This is not my photo. If you are the owner and wish to have it removed, please message me and I will do so. 

Comments

  1. Lilly L.November 16, 2018 at 3:46 PM

    As always, Anne-Marie, I love both what you say and how you say it. Having spent so much of my life seeking to survive the day, death has always seemed close by. As such, the intimacy that formed between us was like many close relationships in that the challenge to respect connection without losing identity took an inordinate amount of energy and time - at least for me - I can't speak for death. Unfortunately, when dissolution and change is that close for such extended periods, the strain shows but in time is normalized. It's like walking the edge of an abyss - one is good at it, by definition, until one isn't. That's one of the things that's been so amazing for me in recent years - as I've been able to retreat from that edge, an appreciation for the view has emerged. Death has become less about the binary consequence of taking one wrong step, and more about the scope and wonder of living each day - less about me, in this form, continuing or not, and more about how I fit within and support a community of people and the environment that supports us. I'll no doubt be talking more about this on my own webpage, but I have this strong sense that the day of our birth and the day of our death are our own, but for all the other days in between we belong to our people and our land. I don't mean that our birth-day and our death-day are passed alone, I merely mean we, as individuals are the focus - and rightly so. But every other moment of our life is either an educational prelude to, or a direct expression of, the connection we inhabit as entities within the universal order. In this way, one's birth and one's death become societal markers and moments for tribal reflection. We are born, and we live, so that our people might continue - and I think it is the same with death. We die as an expression of the gift of our mortality, showing the way for those we hold dear.

    As for the bats, I know exactly what you mean. Up until five or six years ago, I had a couple of dozen living nearby. And every evening, I would go out into my garden, get down on my hands and knees, and begin harvesting, or weeding, or planting. With each exhalation, I would draw mosquitoes toward my face, and the bats, over time, learned that they could capture an easy meal by hovering and swooping as I breathed and moved. It was a beautiful dance within the emerging twilight, of bugs, and bats, and me, all of us in motion about one another. Those times, when they came so close that I would feel the tips of their wings brush my cheeks, were like blessed anointments.

    I haven't seen a single bat these past years, and I miss them terribly. I have to wonder if one consequence of people being so alienated from the idea of death is that they can no longer differentiate between the beauty of an individual's passing, and the horrific tragedy of a specie’s extinction. If that is indeed the case, all the more reason for all of us to support the work you're doing Anne-Marie. For not only does our own evolution as individuals and as a society depend upon it, but the fate of life in all its forms may hang in the balance as well.

    Love,

    Lilly

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