I have not come close to death. But I have feared it. Taunted it, too. Repelled down the sides of cliffs. Spelunked in the bowels of caves. Flown over the Arctic in a small plane that landed on a short gravel bar on the banks of the Nahanni. Once I drove through the mountains on a cold snowy night, joyriding with friends. We ended up stranded in a ditch, no coats, no water, no food. Another night I got lost hiking in Arches National Park. But I sat tight with the bats, two camera bodies, flickering distant desert, until rangers whispered my name.
I was younger then, took more risks. I feel more cautious. Older and prone to safety. It’s boring to lose that sense of adventure. The bones creakier. The face more wrinkled. The risks emotional.
Who do I know that has come close to death? A girlfriend in high school told me she had meningitis as a baby and nearly died. She was scarred from the shots, said it was a miracle that she was still alive. What must it be like for a parent to lose a child? My grandmother lost her son, my mother her brother, at the age of 18. There are ways I would not want to die. I wouldn’t want to be in a fire or drown in the ocean. I don’t think I’d be fond of a shark bite ripping me in half. Car accidents don’t sound like a way to go either. Maybe there is no good way to die. To imagine death.
There have been times when I felt like I was a millisecond away from making a wrong turn with the wheel, a swerve of a bald tire, and something righted the machine. The hand of Fate? A God or Goddess? Is there something bigger, unimaginable to the mortal brain, there to intervene? I believe so. What if reality turns out to be only what we believe. I watched a movie recently called Paper Heart. It was an exploration of love. What is love. When was the first time you fell in love. Have you ever been in love?
I was thinking of the broken heart. In the movie, a faux documentary, the experts said love wasn’t in the heart, but chemical reactions in the brain. How then to explain the tight chest, crackling near the ribs when someone suddenly says goodbye. When I think of death, I wonder about being ready to die. Will I feel like I’m ready when my time comes. And when will that be.
It’s unpredictable, a good argument for living in the moment. And here I am writing about death like it was love and love like it was death. And on the screen in front of me a shark swims next to a narwhale, elusive creatures of the sea. You could go your whole life and never see a narwhale. Yet there he was, the National Geographic photographer who spotted the ivory tusked cluster from the air.
And when he zoomed in with the telephoto, face to face in the water, who was closer to death, animal or human. Do skeptics believe in love? Maybe they don’t need to. Dense and blue. I think love is blue. “In love” is that bright color mix of powder and turquoise. Broken love, a deep blackberry navy. Death. What color is death? In the end it does not matter. The one thing we share besides birth is death. I haven’t come close to it. Yet skin cells continue to shed. New skin, new me. Haggard and prunish, a raisin in the sun.
-Related to topic post WRITING TOPIC – 3 QUESTIONS. [NOTE: This is the first of three questions mentioned by actor and writer Anna Deavere Smith in an interview with Bill Moyers (see link). She talked about the questions in the context of interviewing people and listening to them. The three questions came from a linguist Smith met at a cocktail party in 1979; the questions were, according to the linguist, guaranteed to break the patterns and change the way people are expressing themselves. QuoinMonkey, ybonesy, and frequent guest writer Bob Chrisman take on the three questions by doing a Writing Practice on each.]
-Also related to posts PRACTICE: Have You Ever Come Close To Death? — 15min (by ybonesy), PRACTICE: Have You Ever Come Close To Death? — 15min (by Bob Chrisman)
redravine.wordpress.com 
Have you never felt like you were going to die? Some of those outdoor experiences would have made me feel close to death. Interesting that the idea didn’t enter your mind.
When did the first person you know die? Was it while you were small?
Very interesting post.
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Bob, I did get scared doing some of the things I tried in my youth. When I repelled I was pretty sure I was going to die before my feet landed on the ground! But it didn’t happen. You have to have a lot of trust in the Universe (and your ropes) to walk off a cliff backwards. I took a lot more risks in my twenties than I would take today. There were a lot of things I knew I wanted to try while I was young. I’m glad I had that sense of adventure then. Because I sure wouldn’t be out doing them now.
I have to think about the first person I knew that died. I’ll ponder it today when I’m driving through the snow. I have to go back in the memory banks. I know my Uncle Jack (Mom’s brother) died at 18 right before I was born, literally weeks. I once asked Mom if everyone was sad when I was born, still grieving. She said absolutely not, that I brought joy into their lives. I had not thought of it that way.
I do think his death changed the way my grandmother probably related to me as a baby though. Will ponder that more, too. Thanks for asking.
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Something you said reminded me of another thing about my birth. My maternal grandfather, who my mother idolized, died the February before I was born in May…a circumstance of my birth that passed by unnoticed when I was writing.
The first person I remember dying was my Aunt Fern, my father’s step-sister. I don’t remember that I went to the funeral home. The first funeral visitation that I remember is my Uncle Virgil, Fern’s husband. He had red hair and his brother and sister-in-law made quite a scene at the visitation. They wept copiously and Grandma Hecker said to my sister and I, “You think this is bad. Wait until they find out he didn’t leave them a cent.” I laughed and my sister hit me to shut me up. My grandmother chuckled.
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First person I remember dying was my cousin Gloria. She was in her early 20s, me about 11 or 12. I remember crying and crying. She was close to our family. Drove a VW Bug and got in a car accident on her way to our house, I think. They said first it was a fender bender (I remember hearing those words for the first time then, too) but then, later, no, she had been killed in the accident. She was my sister’s best friend.
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QM, I’ve never thought about Love and Death in colors. It’s an interesting idea. When an Artist sets out to paint death…I wonder what thoughts go through them as they mix the hues. I’ve been close to death 4 times (in water and on land)…all very scary and uncontrollable. I watched death take my Father…and it was both frightening to me (at the loss) and very beautiful at the same time. Hard to explain. I think in the end, the best we can all hope for is a good death, an honorable one…and rapid.
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Heather, thanks. I’m thinking more about that — color and emotion related to death and love. I bet when you sit down to paint those things, it all depends on what your relationship to death is or love is at that one moment.
I can’t believe you’ve been close to death 4 times. Have you ever painted it or tried to photograph it? Now that I think about it, it would be a challenge to try to go out and photograph a scene that strikes us as death-like or love-like.
We should take it on as a photo challenge and each post versions on our blogs linking back to these posts. I’d even be curious to know what my photo would look like at the moment in relationship to those two things — Death, Love.
Bob, do you have any photos that remind you of death and or love? But then, I guess those are different things — going back through photos we’ve taken versus actually going out with the intention of shooting Death and Love. HMMM.
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Oh, Bob, I was thinking about your question the last few days — about when the first person I know died. I don’t remember it being when I was a child. At least not someone that had an impact on me. It was later in life when I was in my twenties — my grandmother, Aunt Cassie, grandfather.
But I remember what Anna Deavere Smith said about Death — how it’s the ultimate form of loss. And it reminds me that what I experienced as a child were people I thought I could count on suddenly disappearing from my life. Or life circumstances changed so that I didn’t see them as much anymore.
I experienced a lot of loss as a child in the form of close important people going away or not contacting me as much — which sometimes felt like a form of death. Maybe abandonment. But definitely some kind of loss. I know as an adult I worked hard to transform the loss into a form of strength and have reconnected with many of those family members. It’s been really healing. Never too late.
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In February 2008 when both my mother and a close friend’s mother died, I took pictures of them in their coffins…a tradition among the families of some of my friends (although not mine). My friend asked for copies of the photos of her deceased and embalmed mother so she could send them to relatives in Canada and Russia.
I have some pictures of my mother in her last months, but I quit taking photos because it seemed like an intrusion and it kept me even more distant from the process. I should dig those out and send them to you.
Red Ravine carried the death photo of her hands for that piece I wrote.
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