Watching from the river bank

 I have been driving down to the river almost every night this week to watch salmon carry out their final act.  The fish have been in the river for a while.  They swim like the undead in bodies that have already  begun to rot.  

The  females rake gravel with battered tails.  The males fight for position to fertilize the eggs moments after they leave her body.   Sometimes resident rainbow trout lurk downstream to bravely dart up onto the redds to gobble what eggs they can before being chased off by a fish 5 times their size.  When the final act is completed, the males disappear and the females rest at the foot of their gravel death beds, protecting their future offspring until their bodies fail.  

In a couple of days the carcasses of these once mighty creatures will tumble downstream to a spot where the current slows.   Their bodies will feed the eagles and other creatures large and small.  Their decomposition will nourish the river for the fry that hatch in the late winter.

This is the end, and the beginning .   I feel lucky to watch it unfold from the bank.  I envy the predictable simplicity of a salmon's existence, living a life to carry out their only act of procreation, then dying.  There are no exceptions.

If only our lives and deaths could be attached to a singular purpose, so.....certain 

This is what I've been thinking this week after I learned that a former boss of mine died at age 61 after a five year battle with cancer.  A couple of days later, I received a text from a bandmate back east informing me that we lost another great friend and musician to cancer. He died on his 41st birthday, one year after being diagnosed.  

There is no rhyme or reason to our life cycle.  We never really know whether we have finished what we started.  We know when a salmon is supposed to die.  We also know that some are supposed to die "prematurely"  in the jaws of orcas and nets of fishermen  before they before perform their final act.  Regardless, the one certainty of the Pacific salmon is that they ALL die after they spawn.  

There are no certanties as to when we will die and we pretend to be immortal.  We will covet resentment of others like it is a precious commodity until our last breathe.  We avoid making peace with others and ourselves.  We skirt the awkwardness of letting someone know how much we appreciate them.  We pass on opportunities to make the world a better place and repeatedly make stupid decisions that deny us of long-held dreams. 

Religions that promise us an afterlife, reincarnation, or enlightenment could be our excuse for procrastinating.  It could also our own laziness or the circuitous route we take through life to avoid pain.  Many of us believe that the prizes we enjoy after death are premised on making the correct choices while we live.  I've found these "right" choices to be either unclear or contradictory, even in religions that share the same texts as their centerpieces.  

 I guess we are complicated creatures that live complicated lives  We face complicated endings....further complicated by the fact that there is no certainty WHEN IT (death) will come for us.