I've always been one of those people unhesitatingly confident that life is abundant in the universe. There's no conceivable way, in my opinion, that earth's myriad creatures are alone as the sole expressions of life in the universe. Surely there are bacteria or archaea who can tolerate extreme (to us) living conditions. And likely there's more. Maybe there are lifeforms that move so fast (or slow) we cannot detect them. Maybe life eludes our expanding array of sensory apparatuses. Maybe alien life doesn't look like life as we know it. The universe is inconceivably vast. If our biological kind of intelligence doesn't exist outside planet earth, I'm confident that there are other ways to live and other indications of intelligence that our descendants will one day encounter in a galaxy far, far away. I've been wowed too many times on earth to believe that the universe doesn't have more in store for us.
Not everyone shares my optimism. Scientists have long been writing about how rare life seems to be in the known universe, and how freakishly chancy it was for life to emerge here on earth. No one knows for certain how life emerged from inert materials into the primordial soup. Was it lightening? Heat? Some alchemy of flour, baking soda, and salt? We only know that we haven't seen recognizable life anywhere we've looked and that space is vast and dark and quiet.
My step-mother-in-law, Jeanne, died three weeks ago yesterday. It’s still kind of hard to believe. Until the end of June, she was still shooting ground squirrels, requesting weirdly specific foods, and filling the room with her big laugh. For years, her body had been the battleground for a war between cancer and an ever-changing cocktail of chemotherapy drugs. But at the start of the year, the venue of her body began to collapse; in July she went into liver failure. Her skin turned yellow, her voice changed, and her apple-cheeks went gaunt.
Her children arrived. Then her step-children and her wide-eyed step-grandchildren. We orbited the house, wrung our hands, and offered food and distractions. In those last days, she was barely there at all, just mumbling, her body maintaining the essential organs. She left us on a Saturday night with her whole family at hand.
Her death, like all deaths, shook the foundation of the people she loved and who loved her. In the fallout, I found myself reaching for countertops, seeking stable horizons, searching for ways to mitigate damage.
Still wobbly, I drove to Seattle to see my parents. Any other year, I would have been driving over with Dave and the kids for Camp Skogen, our annual Lasher-family gathering at my parents' place on Whidbey Island. But with my parents now living in an apartment in Ballard, with our grown children busy with work and travel, with no special weekend carved out of the summer for it, Camp Skogen came to a logical end last summer. This year, it was me and the dogs.
As I drove, my parents’ lives felt newly precarious. I missed who they were, and who we were as a family before they began to show cognitive decline. I missed our Camp Skogen tradition. I missed my nieces and nephews. I missed it all so deeply in my gut that loss permeating my bones, amplifying all the other losses.
But when I arrived and my parents were reunited with their dog, when both my sisters made time to be there, when we finally gathered on Whidbey Island and the candles cast a warm light and good music beamed from the speakers, the losses mellowed into the kind of normal change that signifies the passing of time. There we were, the original five of us, alive and well, in a house built from my parents’ creativity and vision.
The earth, we’re learning, is special. There are lots of earth-like planets in the universe, but not all of tilt so gently at 23.5 degrees, giving us livable seasons. Few earth-like planets have moons as large (relative to the planet) and as close as ours to stabilize their orbit. Apparently, earth's moon was the result of a freak accident—a shrapnel of earth launched into orbit by a colliding planet. Its formation may have thinned the earth's crust enough to facilitate shifting tectonic plates, volcanoes, deep sea vents, explosions, chemical reactions, and mutations that made life possible. That's just the moon—one of an uncountable number of crazy accidents to set earth on the path to habitability.
When I loaded my car with the dogs to return home, my mom asked, as she always does, if she could keep her dog, Wren. Wren has been living with me for the past year, on a temporary (but, let's face it, permanent) arrangement. I sighed at the prospect of breaking her heart again. She looked so hopeful, as she reached in the car and rumpled Wren's ears.
"Mom," I said, "you deserve to have your dog, but Wren is fifteen years old, incontinent, requires special medication, and she wakes up at 6:00 am needing breakfast and a walk." I reminded my mom that she likes to sleep in, and that she lives on the third floor of an apartment building, and that Wren's walks would have to be in the neighborhood on a leash. We had agreed many months ago that Wren's care was too much for her and my dad, and that Wren would be better off at my house in Spokane. She nodded like an obedient child pretending to understand; she nuzzled Wren's ears and kissed her nose and thanked me for taking care of her. Then she stepped back from the car and waved.
"I'll bring her back next time," I told her, and drove away.
It was inconceivable, at the time, that we would have to put Wren down at the end of the week, but her decline came swiftly. She stopped eating, stopped drinking, peed on her bed and in the entry way, and laid listless on the floor. The vet had theories about what could be wrong, but none of the theories had good outcomes. I called my mom and told her I could drive Wren to Seattle at the end of next week and we could put her down together. But my mom was adamant. Not only didn't she feel it was unnecessary to let Wren suffer any longer than she had to, she asked me to euthanize her as soon as possible. It was Friday at 3pm. I called our vet and explained the situation. They said they could do it in an hour.
Again the earth shook. Again I staggered.
If we know anything, we know this: for life to evolve on earth, and perhaps on other planets, there had to be accidents, mishaps, and mutations. No, that's too mild. There had to be earthquakes, colossal floods, catastrophes.
As much as we humans try to keep our individual lives as stable and predictable and pain-free as possible, I try to remember that life requires destruction and instability to evolve. It's one of those contradictions that unites existence. It need not make us complacent or accepting of premature death, but it might give us something steady to hold onto.
Folk singer John Craigie wrote a song about the gobsmacking set of coincidences that caused any of us to live. The song, Dissect the Bird, has been playing on my speaker all weekend.
So much had to happen just exactly right
Sparks had to catch, oceans had to freeze
Billions of cells had to survive endless disease
Civilizations had to crumble, wars had to be fought
Bad presidents had to get elected, good presidents had to get shot
People had to leave, hearts had to get broken
People had to die so your eyes could open…
It’s a miracle that you’re here at all.
Two truths exist side by side. Life on earth is miraculous, rare, and unique in the known universe. It is also abundant, productive, and fleeting. I can’t explain death, where we go, or how it feels to lose someone. I only know that for myself, it’s comforting to look at the stars and feel both alone and surrounded by inexplicable, miraculous, abundant life.
Wiping tears. Such a beautiful piece, Heidi.
A beautiful description of Eren. Such a sweet lovable dog. Glad your mom got in a good visit