Death. Or How I learned to unfold my wings as I fall

Initially, after a string of deaths about lately, this was about death as a concept, an idea and how we all deal with it. Then, as with any written work, it morphed into something else. It was all sort of impersonal, how I view others dealing with that ultimate, mysterious motivator. Then Ray Bradbury, my all time favorite author died on June 5th, 2012.

I could try to list all the ways his stories impacted my life ever since that first taste of “Fahrenheit 451” back in junior high, but that doesn’t seem to fit quite right. Instead, I’m going to the story my way, which seems more appropriate.

Once more I’ve learned an important lesson from the master. I’ve been reminded of how I deal with death; rather I should say how I don’t deal with it, or that’s how it seems to me anyway. In my life I’ve not had a person really close to me die. It’s mostly been friends’ relatives, friends, etc. There have been a few key deaths, those of my grandfathers, but I was so incredible young it’s as if they were never real, existing only as stories. That’s not to say that when someone close to me has a death or is still dealing with a death, that I don’t feel compassion or sympathy or try to help how I can. I’ve always been able to have a certain amount of detachment when dealing with it, always deflecting it, glancing at it, but never facing it head on. And this worries me a bit. Throughout my teens and into my adult life I’ve been fortunate; I suppose you might say, however crude that sounds. The closest person that has died was my maternal grandmother, Susan Jane Robinson. I was not as close to her as my sister was, at least not in my adult years. As a kid it’s different, with grandparents and their auras of wonder. Things can change when you lose the naivety of childhood. Out of respect that is all I shall say. During the process leading up to her death and the entire whirlwind after, again my detached analytical side kicked in. I’d like to think this helped my sister, my mother & her brother as they took the death hard, each in their own way.

So why does the death of an amazingly gift writer seem to affect me harder? It’s because of what he showed me, what he leaves behind and the fact that there will be no more new stories. That’s what it’s about though, isn’t it? What we leave behind and how we lived our life. Ray Bradbury left behind so many fantastic, scary, wondrous, touching tales that will last many centuries after he’s gone. He lived life to its fullest, never settling or doing anything he didn’t love doing. Something I ask myself nearly every day. Am I doing what I love? He didn’t tell us anything new, anything we didn’t already know, not really. It was all there for us to see, if we just looked. Deep down we know but refuse to see, to accept the truths we’ve buried. For example, go read one of his books, “Fahrenheit 451”, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, its companion “Dandelion Wine”, “The Martian Chronicles” or “The Illustrated Man”; and I dare you not to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of denial and ignorance. It wasn’t just about what we are, but also who we could be, who we might or never were. He saw the pain and horror of life, but thru a filter of child-like glee and wonder. He didn’t do this to block out all the bad things in life, rather to act as a balance and more so, a reminder that we must enjoy what we can of life while we’re here. I hope that we can ALL do this more often. I will wrap this up with a quote from, arguably, his greatest story, and my all time favorite book “Fahrenheit 451.” After all, who other than Ray, himself, could sum up what his death means.

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”