Tomorrow, Tuesday, is All Souls Day for Catholics, that special time when we pray for and remember our dead.
The last three weeks have brought news of several deaths of people close to others I know or love: a young nurse who drowned, a two-month old infant, a 19-year-old who died in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, a 36-year-old who passed away from COVID complications. I personally knew none of these people, but was saddened nonetheless by their loss. The deceased nurse leaves family and friends in mourning, the infant leaves behind grieving parents and siblings, the boy in the car crash leaves bereft some people I know well, as does the victim of the virus.
Some attribute these deaths to the will of God, some to fate, and some to chance or accident, which is not the same engine as fate.
As for me, I admit, I have no answers as to why Death snatches some of us. I do believe in a Higher Power, but can't possibly claim to know why young people are chosen for death. I believe a bit in fate, as delineated in Somerset Maughm's fable "An Appointment in Samarra." I believe in chance or accident. Some people, like my wife, seem to die not from God's will or even by fate, but simply by chance. To call a brain aneurysm the will of God, for example, seems a bit overboard to me. Best attribute it to the walls of the arteries and veins in the brain.
I have reached my Biblical "three score and ten" years, and sometimes I feel Death at my elbow. Do I respond from fear or terror to that specter? I could, but what would be the point? Fear would prevent nothing. Human beings die, young and old, and I am a human being. Jogging every day might prolong my life another five or six years, but eventually my destination is the bone yard.
Though I retain my belief in God and an afterlife, this first night of November also brings the old idea of fate. Death choses us:
"The Appointment in Samarra"
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])
The speaker is Death:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.
Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
The cold, hard truth is that each one of us has an appointment in Samarra.
How we face that truth, how we leave this earth, matters. My mother left me the gift of courage in her death. My wife's last words to me were "I love you."
I hope and pray I can leave behind such a legacy. That is what matters.
The last three weeks have brought news of several deaths of people close to others I know or love: a young nurse who drowned, a two-month old infant, a 19-year-old who died in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, a 36-year-old who passed away from COVID complications. I personally knew none of these people, but was saddened nonetheless by their loss. The deceased nurse leaves family and friends in mourning, the infant leaves behind grieving parents and siblings, the boy in the car crash leaves bereft some people I know well, as does the victim of the virus.
Some attribute these deaths to the will of God, some to fate, and some to chance or accident, which is not the same engine as fate.
As for me, I admit, I have no answers as to why Death snatches some of us. I do believe in a Higher Power, but can't possibly claim to know why young people are chosen for death. I believe a bit in fate, as delineated in Somerset Maughm's fable "An Appointment in Samarra." I believe in chance or accident. Some people, like my wife, seem to die not from God's will or even by fate, but simply by chance. To call a brain aneurysm the will of God, for example, seems a bit overboard to me. Best attribute it to the walls of the arteries and veins in the brain.
I have reached my Biblical "three score and ten" years, and sometimes I feel Death at my elbow. Do I respond from fear or terror to that specter? I could, but what would be the point? Fear would prevent nothing. Human beings die, young and old, and I am a human being. Jogging every day might prolong my life another five or six years, but eventually my destination is the bone yard.
Though I retain my belief in God and an afterlife, this first night of November also brings the old idea of fate. Death choses us:
"The Appointment in Samarra"
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])
The speaker is Death:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.
Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
The cold, hard truth is that each one of us has an appointment in Samarra.
How we face that truth, how we leave this earth, matters. My mother left me the gift of courage in her death. My wife's last words to me were "I love you."
I hope and pray I can leave behind such a legacy. That is what matters.