Eulogy for a Squirrel

I ran over a squirrel with my car today. I cried all the way to work and then came home this afternoon and cried over it some more. This may seem a bit over the top to some people, but I feel absolutely terrible. For a vegetarian to find herself immediately responsible for the death of an animal...it is horrifying. All day I thought of the bump under my wheel and the little life that ended with it. Animals are just as alive as we are after all, if not more so--they want to play and eat and sleep and mate and sing and love and bask in the magnificence of spring every bit as much as we do. And that little squirrel won't get to anymore.

Death still seems so unnatural to me--I can't help but feel that we should all live forever, that everything should live for ever: trees, flowers, squirrels, husbands, children, grandmothers. That no one should ever die--no one should ever be separated. No one should ever have the sweetness of living taken away.

I suppose that in this world death is often a mercy, but I struggle to see any beauty in it. I suppose that in death the soul is unfettered, the spirit free--but heaven seems so foreign to me and I love this world so much. I love living in this world, despite its uglinesses, its tragedies. I love its blue skies, its grey skies, its falls and springs and summers, its lakes and rivers and oceans, its trees, snails, grasshoppers, manatees, fireflies, and lady bugs. It is a beautiful place and I'm grateful to belong to it.

I guess the only thing I could love more than life in this world is the God who made it. That we leave earth and return to God...it is the only consolation for so great a loss.