At my day job, I deal with a lot of books. Last Friday, late in the afternoon, I stumbled across, purely by accident, a book called After Life: Ways We Think About Death. It was a short book, written for middle school students, and the description said it "examines the history, beliefs and customs surrounding death in cultures around the world". That sounded interesting, so I opened it up and started reading.
I was startled almost immediately when I saw the book was dedicated to 2 people: one named Wendy, and one named Joy! What a strange coincidence, I thought. I know people with those names. In the back of my mind, I hoped it wasn't some kind of ill omen, a sign that I should read it because of some impending death.
I put those thoughts aside and skimmed through the book. A note at the beginning said that not talking about death to kids can make it bigger and scarier for them, so the author hoped to open the door to discussing it, by looking at how science and culture look at death. I liked that the first chapter started by talking about how we are all made of stardust, and how the atoms of all living things get recycled into other living things over many years. Overall, it was an interesting read.
To be honest, though, I never got the idea of the ill omen out of my head. It gave me an ominous feeling for most of the weekend. That feeling was replaced with shock when the news broke on Sunday that Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. After the initial shock wore off (and it took a while, because, boy, that was a big shock!), it occurred to me that maybe the strange coincidence and ominous feeling were really a kind of premonition. Who knows.
What I do know is that I became a Kobe Bryant fan by way of Coach Phil Jackson. Way back in the '90s, I was a big fan of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and the Chicago Bulls. As I watched them win championship after championship, it dawned on me that it had to be more than Jordan and Pippen. They must have a really good coach, too. At some point while I was in college, I looked around to see what I could learn about their coach, Phil Jackson. I bought a copy of his autobiography, called Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior. In it, I learned that his lifelong quest was to merge basketball and spirituality. That was such a bizarre goal that I became an instant fan of him as a coach.
After the Bulls dynasty ended, Phil took a year off and then became head coach of the Lakers, with superstars Kobe and Shaq on the team. Thus, I became a big Lakers fan, and from 1999 - 2011 (I can't believe it was that long!) I cheered for Phil, Kobe, Shaq, and everyone else on the team as they won championship after championship, but also as they endured drama after drama (and boy, was there a lot of it!).
In hindsight, no wonder I was so shocked at Kobe's death. I spent an entire decade reading and watching and rooting for all things Lakers.
To come full circle, here are some random, interesting things I learned from the After Life book:
- During the plague, "doctors wore masks with birdlike beaks filled with dried flowers, herbs and spices, which they thought would protect them from the disease". I've seen drawings of plague doctors wearing those masks, but I never knew why they wore them.
- At a nursing home in Rhode Island, a cat named Oscar always knew when people were about to die. Ever since he was young, he would jump on a bed and cuddle with someone, who then died a few hours later. It got to the point that the nursing home staff would call family members as soon as Oscar jumped on someone's bed. A doctor wrote about Oscar in a medical journal.
- When talking about cremation, the book noted creative things people have done with cremated remains, like turn them into fireworks, artificial diamonds, and even underwater reefs. I'm reminded of my previous blog post, where a comic book writer requested his remains be turned into a comic book.
- The book ended with a section on grief. It mentioned the five stages of grief, but said the problem with it is that it implies a linear approach, where you come out the other end suddenly feeling better. The book suggested a different idea, the shape of the number 8, where grief is more like a cycle. The positive feelings are on top and the negative on the bottom, and you can move around in any order, at any time.
The book was an interesting, but rather somber, read.