==JAPAN: KM== [Death]

It was 10:10 pm. I stopped watching a news show and opened the back door. She was still lying there in an unnatural posture. I bent down to her to make sure she was breathing. Her breath was faint. So quiet. Suddenly she convulsed about 20 times. Then she stopped. I could do nothing but sit by her. I took her in my arm and watched her head droop in a way that it would have never done if she were alive. She was gone; I knew it.
She had been my dog for almost 16 years. At first she could sit on my palm and was so cute. But she was as gluttonous as any other dog in the neighborhood. Once my dog's friend welcomed her by dropping a bone for her, but she just stole the bone and ran away from him and ate it up. After that she wagged her tail to greet him. She had such greediness that in her later years she ate everyday though she lost some teeth and could not move so much. Since it was my duty to give her food for 16 years, even after she passed away, I sometimes found myself thinking; "Oh, I have to give her food!" Every time I thought about her death, I actually wondered where she went. I knew why my friend was not here and I was never preoccupied with it, but it felt somewhat strange to me that she didn't exist in our world. If she was not in our world, where was she? Even today I still carry around this mystery.
Death is a mystery. It starts the instant we are born. When my dog died, I wondered how it came to be in the first place. Living things are composed of so many living cells. If each cell is alive, why does the moment of death come in a fraction of a second? Can millions of cells die just at the same time? Death may actually visit more slowly. Perhaps some medical doctors will explain that phenomenon as a part of long process. So in the midst of that course, she lost her consciousness, her respiratory system failed and her heart stopped throbbing. However, from not only a physical perspective but also from a cultural point of view, the process of death is viewed so differently from nation to nation. For example, there is a tribe in Borneo in which it is believed that death takes at least 8 months to complete. It starts after one loses his breath and ends when his dead body has turned into a dry skeleton. In Japan from a social standpoint it takes 2~3days to finalize a death. But my dog's case is the first experience for me to be directly concerned in death, it was not quite so easy for me to come to terms with the reality.
At the time of my dog's death, I had to understand death as it was; also I had to get used to her absence. One day, I found a Tanka in which a son expressed his grief at the loss of his mother. It went, "Where does Mother pass by now? A big zelkova(keyaki) tree trembles and waterdrops fall." (An old Japanese myth says that the land of the dead lies under the ground and the dead must walk a long way to reach it.) I had thought it was strange to wonder so often where she was. This poem reassured me that many other people had had a similar experience like me. Till then I didn't understand why some people firmly believe in the world after death, but I recognized that they just wanted an answer to this mystery. People often turn to religion to make peace with death. Through religious belief people lessen the impact of their loss and explain for where they depart. Though it is often said that most Japanese have no religion, they do have some characteristic attitudes toward death. For instance, we have a tendency to be deeply attached to bringing home the dead body of the beloved one. (When one airplane crashed, the families concerned managed to take home even a piece of their departed's remains. If it was impossible, they took home a stone or even just some sand.) Another example is that we usually burn the dead body. The Japanese way of cremation is very unique in the world. We are said to hate wounding the remains of beloved, but we burn it without any hesitation because we believe that the cremation purify the defilement of death. Thus I did so for my dog.
I had thought I understood what the death was, or at least I had known a little about it. But my companion's death showed me that I knew almost nothing about it. Even now I don't grasp exactly the difference between the last minute she was living and the next moment when she was gone. I will study about it from now on till I've got it. I don't think I am pious, however, it was very interesting to me that I saw death from a Japanese cultural viewpoint. Confronted with her death, I feel as if the death is a little less of a stranger than before. It is often said that if you think about death, you cannot but think about life. Because they are both sides of the same coin and we all have to die some day.
A lot of funny memories with her yet make me smile. She made my life rich in every way. I thank her for not just being with me but also for giving me a chance to think about death itself and many things around death. Passing through varied experience is much fun. Now I am interested in what I feel when I am dying. My curiosity never sleeps.

"Getting It Together"

To think about something is one thing and to write it down is quite another; this is what I thought when I was wrestling with this essay. I am convinced everyone who has written an essay feels like me, but there is one great aspect about writing an essay. When you try to explain something to other people, you inevitably get your ideas into shape anyhow. That encourages you to consider the topic deeper than you have done before. In the course of refining your thoughts, you may find another interesting fact you've never been conscious of. What a pleasurable experience that is!