Death by Life
Yesterday a little mucus, tomorrow a handful of ashes - Marcus Aurelius
I have a small open wound on one of my toes from when I accidentally scraped it. It was a little deep, but I didn't dress it. Today, I fell asleep on my desk, and I had a dream that I was being eaten. I felt as though something was consuming me, taking bits of my flesh and savoring each part. Then I woke up and saw ants - ants crawling around and eating away at the sides of the wound. The scene horrified me. I immediately rushed to wash the wound and dressed it up. The bites and acids from the ants stung, but it felt like more than just stinging - I still had this strange, awful feeling of being consumed. It made me think of death: is this what happens when we're six feet under? Do dead bodies feel the slow work of maggots and bacteria eating away until there's nothing left?
We think of death as something so sudden - Snap, you're dead, now you don't exist anymore, but it really isn't so sudden, I realise. It makes sense after all - it took nine months to form the body you were born into, and however many years you have lived until now to form the body you have now, so why would it all be gone instantly? Death, is perhaps an unravelling, just like how you were built cell by cell, you unravel cell by cell. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, and with it takes a part of you. We’re not disappearing all at once; we’re just becoming something else, something that’s always been. As they say, you came from the soil, and to the soil you shall go. Not in a dramatic, painful flash, but through a steady, natural return. The soil that gave you life will now take you back
Perhaps it's a blessing we are long gone before nature reclaims us, as your flesh melts, as your eyes fall back into your skull, as your insides liquefy and melt into a mix of bacterial juice. The gasses trapped within you explode into the outside, as the flies rush in to make home of you, and lay their eggs that will hatch into wiggling larva that knows you as nothing but their home, and feast on all that remains. Bit by bit, the body, once a storehouse of joy, dreams, laughter, hope, imagination, becomes a banquet for creatures you never noticed in life. Bones, stripped clean, lie exposed, and rings hollow bleached by time and weather. Even they are not permanent. Fungi and bacteria will creep in, breaking down the minerals until nothing remains but particles mingling with the soil. '
What scared me was the idea of being powerless, of my body becoming food for something tiny and indifferent. I see ants and worms everyday, but they are insignificant right? I am an apex predator, a species that has conquered every part of this world and beyond. Yet in the end, we surrender and succumb to these lesser creatures, creatures we dismiss without a second thought. Ants, worms, maggots, things we crush underfoot without hesitation, become the ultimate victors. They don’t care about my dreams, my name, or the places I’ve conquered. To them, I’m nothing more than sustenance, a temporary body awaiting reclamation. We build skyscrapers, map the cosmos, invent cures for disease. We crown ourselves kings and queens of the planet. Yet when life slips from us, we become soil-bound offerings for creatures who have been quietly waiting. They outlive us, outlast us, and inherit us in the end. They don’t stop to mourn. They are oblivious to our narcissism, they do not care the importance we place on ourselves.
They aren’t evil; they’re just being. They don’t have a concept of good or bad. They're simply following their instincts, playing their part in a cycle far older than any of us. They don’t know who we are or what we’ve done; to them, we are just another source of life. They’re following the orders nature has given them, as old as the earth itself. There’s no malice in their actions. it's not a punishment or a judgment, it’s simply how life continues.
Life is not an endless chase for dominance or immortality, but a temporary dance with time. We live our lives thinking we're different, that we're in control, that we're meant for something more. But in the end, we are no different from everything else that came before us. And maybe that’s the hardest truth of all, not that we will die, but that once we’re gone, the world will go on without us. But even in this, there’s something oddly freeing. We are not alone in this process. We may not be remembered, but that doesn’t mean our lives were without purpose. In the moments we lived, we made something real, something uniquely ours. The joy, the pain, the love, the loss, they are ours alone, and no matter how small they seem, they meant something in our brief time here. We were part of something bigger, something older than us, and we will return to it, like the soil that once nurtured us. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love; if you want me again, look for me under your bootsoles.
- Walt Whitman