My husband Tom is a Buddhist. I’m a Christian. Both our traditions make no bones about what lies ahead. We all die. Both traditions in their raw essence counter our culture’s tendency to hide and deny death.
Tom and I are entering into the last third of our lives. We don’t recognize ourselves when passing a mirror. Hair is gray and thinning. Skin sags in folds. There are brown blotches appearing on our hands and faces. All those vows we made not to let ourselves go the way of our grandparents and parents, they are broken and useless in the face of oncoming age. And what is there to do?
We’re living with a beloved puppy, Foxy, who has sped past us in dog years. She keeps us vigilant. As far as we can tell (she was a stray) she’s about 16 years old. Her teeth are rotten and her breath smells like dead fish when she stands in front of me panting expectantly. Foxy still loves to go for walks, but she’s got neurological problems. If she stands in one spot too long her right front leg quivers. When both her rear legs stay in the same spot the rest of her body moves forward, until she jerks herself together before she falls down. Some days its doesn’t work and she collapses. I found her in the flower bed the other evening doggedly trying to get up. Yet even she seeks to defy the encroaching years. This morning she was following around behind me as I watered the tomatoes and roses. Then she shot out of the yard as if chasing a cat. She ran over into our neighbors’ driveway and wheeled around to dash back. Before she made it to the front door, she circled again and dashed off in the other direction, making it two houses down into the driveway before circling back again. Then, panting, she ran to stand at the front door until we let her in.
Foxy embodies our ambivalence about aging into death. It’s there, in front of us, as the natural end-stage of this life. How we meet it is up to us. Buddhists don’t make promises about life beyond death like Christians do. That’s where the similarity ends. Buddhism emphasizes our daily lives and considers death a transition. Christianity, as a form of Judaism, was probably much closer to that in its formative stages.
When we lose someone we love we have a hard time letting go. So Christians borrowed from other faiths and philosophies that promise life after death. I’m not sure what I believe about those things. When my father was dying he let me know he was having a hard time even though, as a minister, he’d helped many others embrace death with a certain faith. The further I walk this path of life, the more uncertain I become about what lies ahead. But I mean to continue with my eyes and heart open. The other day I had eyelid shortening surgery, so my eyes are a bit more open. The better to see what’s coming.