Day 1

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” Matthew 10:29

******

Dear Alex,

A good death he had, a doctor once told me in a case study. What would qualify a finale, yours and mine, as good?

My four-legged companion of 13 years, a maltese sized slighter than a loaf of braided bread, might have fit the criteria of a good death. She passed yesterday morning, absent of pain, minimally distressed, her death in progress orchestrated with the ER crew in exorbitant detail. The last injections of high-dosed, rapid-acting anesthetics, propofol followed by pentobarbital, transferred her diminishing three-pound presence bearing on my arms into a cloud of grief to be questioned.

Why this morning, not next week or Winter, without being granted another cycle of taking her out to the lawn before sunrise and twilight? Her breakfast bowl I’d laid out on her silicone mat by my bed and hers before our emergent drive to the hospital not more than two hours ago. What could I do - and this I’d like to know - to relish again her tail and snout in one stream of sprawling passion diving for her duck-boar kibbles in perfect cut and bite?

And if her death is deemed good, what does it speak about her living? Does a good life effect a good end?

My darling of angelic fluff is no more. Whatever good and lovely I could not grasp at home after I retuned alone to a hollow home. I saw nothing and all drooped in dark by midday. Text messages from families and friends whom I’d notified earlier about her farewell reinforced the goodness of death when remembered about life. I hurried to gather her things from room to shadow - her blankets, toothbrush, plush toys, fallen hair - as if rushing her burial of belongings to smother sorrow, a good death I was denying to trade in for the delusion of her coming back to our bedroom.

By afternoon when the rawness of virgin wound turned viral in me, I phoned my mom 600+ miles away. With 81 years seeped in her bones, she called me to arise - get out there where goodness runs.

A good death is a gift from having lived well by design.

Yours, Kate

*******

Dear Kate,

There’s a moment - and there are many - but here, this: in Hayao Miyazaki’s “Kiki's Delivery Service,” the 28th minute, after Kiki left her own family and moved to a seaside town to learn how to be independent and train herself to deliver enchanting service to a disenchanted world, before she gets to settle down and settle in to know her neighbors, including the man of the house who is going to be her new family, she goes to the outhouse.

Do you remember that, the outhouse sequence? how she moves, the mise-en-scène of her soul? She’s waiting. For her coming of age, a new morning in a new world. And the camera holds you there, asks you to settle down, settle in, and wait with her.

The last time I watched Kiki I watched my kids and nieces watching it. They were making comments, about the man of the house, how he doesn’t look like any man of any house they know. And the outhouse moment went by - and might as well, because it serves no purpose to the story in their heads. Move on with life already.

I wondered what you did yesterday after you left the animal hospital. What I really wanted to ask is What happened to you? but I know, in our world, we don’t actually let things happen. We make things happen. We don’t fly on a broom, we ride in an airship.

You probably packed up your dog’s belongings, cleaned up everything with your hands and tears, and, knowing you, I imagine you were ready to think about the good things you can do with all the stuffs, giving them away to bless other pet lovers, with the not so ulterior motive to help yourself moving on and letting go.

Yesterday when you texted me the picture, I texted back and said You can let go now, Jesus is taking over. Tears came down my cheeks then as now, these words speaking to me as I spoke them, knowing Jesus has always been the one who takes care of everything but how rare the moment is for us to not let it go.

I wondered if you had a moment with Jesus, or did you let it go, let Him pass you by?

Someone actually did a podcast with the title “Kiki’s Delivery Service minute 28 - Unnecessary Outhouse,” just as you can find a YouTube video called “Kiki’s Delivery Service (and its lessons on mental health and burnout).” What is disenchantment? It’s to cut up your pet and perform every surgery necessary to keep your world a going concern when it’s time to let her go.

This is how we understand ourselves - for example - the meaning of family, the way Pixar depicts it in “The Incredibles.” Like Kiki, everyone in the household needs to “learn to fly,” but the family isn’t really a good one until everyone in it becomes a superhero in his or her own right. Nobody waits; everybody moves on with life already, and, hopefully, could find a way to stick together and pay tribute to the Old Way. But one needs putting oneself together before sticking to anything else.

"In this age, in which technics is invading and conquering the last enemy—man's inner life, the psyche itself—a suitable new character type has arrived on the scene: the psychological man." (Philip Rieff) The journeying out of “The Incredibles” becomes the journeying in of “Inside Out,” cutting up the pet project of a human becoming, dissecting oneself as it were, a soul into its psyche components. There are so many lessons to learn on mental health, and one shall burn out learning them all. “Inside Out” is the last Pixar movie I watched (and I will tell you the same on my deathbed).

Remember the movie “Parasite”? I am sure you do. The mild torture porn with a latent socialist agenda, so it seems to us, captured our imagination. What we couldn’t see is what we wouldn’t see in our world: why this family sticks together, this way, at all. The men and women of the house do not look like any man or woman of any house we know in our new world, our coming of age. We are all alone now, with our psyche components we know so well, endlessly bouncing around for our attention, colorful and all.

I am going out of the house to take a walk. The snow is still fresh, and it is a new morning.

Yours, Alex