An excerpt from “’Til Death Do Us Part?” a book by Christopher Nyerges,
available on Kindle, or from www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.
It was Memorial Day 1998, and I had
scheduled to conduct a wild food outing at Pasadena’s Hahamongna Watershed
Park. Since it was Memorial Day, my
topic for a short discussion at the end of the outing was “death.” Hahamongna Park -- formerly called Oak Grove
Park -- is the site of one of the Gabrielino Indian villages along the Arroyo
Seco. I have found many handstones
under the oak groves, used by people millennia ago to crack and grind their
acorns and perform other tasks. Down in the bottom of the wash, on the far side
of the canyon, I have read that archaeologists had found Indian bodies and
believed the site was an old Gabrielino cemetery.
It was a cool and overcast day as
participants for the wild food outing gathered in the parking area of the
park. Among the half-dozen participants
who showed up for the outing was Martin Kruse, a bearded, burly bear of a man
who looked like he’d be more at home in the 19th century. He introduced himself and told me that he’d
long wanted to meet me, that we both wrote for many of the same publications
and had many friends in common, such as Ron Hood. Martin and I chatted as the other outing participants listened,
and he told me about his work with archery and primitive bow-making.
We walked down in the flat area of
the large expanse of the park, where the wet mud had hardened, capturing
countless animal tracks. Martin told us
how to differentiate between coyote and dog tracks. He identified crow and other birds, showed us how to recognize
the tracks of squirrel and rabbit. He’d
obviously done a lot of tracking during his time hunting with a bow.
I later learned from Martin’s
father that this was a favorite place of Martin’s when he was much
younger. He’d come here and spend a
week or two and study nature and tracks and practice with his bow. When we saw the deer tracks, Martin showed
us how the deer’s hind foot had stepped into its own track just laid by its
front foot. Martin said that only the
female walks this way, that the male’s gait is different. He told us that the size of the hoof print
meant it was a female deer about a year and a half old. I could tell that Martin enjoyed telling us
all about the track.
After walking throughout the flat
area, I led the way back to the oak trees where I would share my lesson. Within seconds, someone in the rear called
out. Martin had fallen. I first thought it was a joke, and ran to
him. It was no joke. His face already looked purple. The man who had been walking with him said
he’d not tripped -- he just fell. You
could tell by his hand position that he didn’t trip. I tried to rouse him, but it was quickly obvious that he was
“out.”
Several of us moved Martin into
what we assumed would be a more comfortable position, and that wasn’t
easy! Martin was a big guy. And then -- since I was the only one who
knew the area -- I ran to a phone to call 911.
This was before the days of ubiquitous cell phones. Within 10 minutes, before I even got back to the group and Martin’s flat body --
paramedics from the City of Pasadena were on the scene, attempting to revive
him. They all worked like a highly-coordinated team, speaking among themselves
only briefly and in terms we didn’t understand. They were what we call a “well-oiled machine.” They carried him into the ambulance and took
him away.
I could tell that the remainder of
the outing participants were in varying degrees of shock. It had all been like a dream, and now Martin
was gone. We discussed the merits and
pitfalls of the modern medical system, and whether there was more we could have
done to help Martin. We discussed whether we thought Martin would revive or
not. The paramedics had been fairly
tight-lipped. When one was asked what he thought about Martin’s chances of
recovery, he only said “I can’t do that.”
Still, we all knew it was serious.
We recalled one paramedic yelling “full arrest” to another when they
arrived at the scene.
So there we stood in the cool
afternoon breeze, contemplating death in the most sobering manner
possible. I explained to everyone my
death lesson -- which hardly seemed appropriate now. I didn’t talk everyone through the intended exercise -- I just
explained a process that I’d done many times on Memorial Day.
Write a list of all those close
people in your life. Then, close your
eyes, and imagine getting a phone call telling you that they have just
died. For most people, there are tears
and a feeling of regret that they never told that person something. You write down all those things you wanted
to say to that person. Then, since
these folks are still alive, you then go and call them or write them or see
them in person and tell them. This is a
very profound exercise, and in many ways can be called “healing.”
But we didn’t actually go through
this exercise. We were in no mood for
an “exercise.” Someone had just died in
our midst. We had to deal with it. We talked about how important it is to live
each moment with intent, with joy, with soberness. We talked about how Martin may have wanted to say things to those
he loved, but no longer could. After
all, it isn’t necessarily others who
might die. We talked about the stages
that one passes through in the after death state, and how Martin will
experience peace, but will also experience a life-review, a state of purgation,
a state of heaven, and eventually another embodiment. One guy muttered, “I
don’t believe in reincarnation.” I knew
with this last point that I was treading on ground that some categorize as
“religious beliefs,” so I didn’t push the matter. I just suggesed that anyone interested read about it in Harold
Percival’s Thinking and Destiny and decide for themselves.
Each person commented how
“coincidental” it was that the lecture topic that I’d chosen for the day, and
listed on the schedule, was “Death.” We
kept reflecting on Martin. At that
moment, none of us knew yet that Martin would not recover, that he had in fact
died, and that he died in a place he loved.
Nor had we known that Martin had a heart pacer, and an artery to his
heart that was narrow. We were aware
that he’d had surgery -- probably to the heart -- because we opened his shirt
and saw the scar.
What had really brought Martin
there on that day? I felt goose bumps
at first, thinking that on some level he wanted to be with me, enjoying the
natural world, meeting as two souls in the place he loved, near the old Indian
burial ground, on his final day.
A German woman who’d been on the
outing, Walti, told me that we should not feel sad.
“It was quick,” she told me later.
“What better place to die.” I could not
help but agree with her. Martin’s death
was apparently sudden, and his last memory would have been looking at the
willows and the rushing stream and the cloudy sky and the sand flats of the
Hahamongna Watershed Park. In his final
moments, he was surrounded with friends that he’d only met that day, trail
compadres who shared a common love of the outdoors, all brought together at
this time and this place to witness his passing.
Though I barely knew him, I felt
closer to him in death.
Of course, I told Dolores about
this when I got home. I was a bit
shaken by the experience. In fact, it
was not until late that night that I learned the name of who had died on my outing. Yes, he’d told me his name when he arrived,
but so did a dozen other people who’d I’d just met that day. By calling around to the fire department and
to the hospital, I learned Martin’s identity, and I managed to figure out his
phone number through process of elimination in my phone log. Of course, I was partly worried about legal
ramifications. It was Martin’s wife who
told me that Martin died doing what he loved doing, and that it was probably
the best of all possible outcomes that he died in that manner. She also said that the family felt Martin
was living on “borrowed time,” that they felt he should have died (according to
what the doctors said) five years earlier.
A few days later, Dolores and I and
a few others were discussing this incident, and wondering about the series of
choices that brought Martin to me on his last day.
Dolores seemed very thoughtful
about all this, and said that possibly Martin’s Doer (his spiritual Self) knew
that his body was going to die. Coming
to my outdoor outing brought him into contact with my Doer, my spiritual Self,
which could have been a final uplifting act, whether or not each of us realized
it.
Dolores was never one who engaged
in flattery, and she always kept me humble.
She knew that we were not perfect and that we had a long way to go. Yet, we continued to work at and struggle on
the Spiritual Path of perfection and
evolution. It was always “fall down
seven times, get up eight times.” In
our perspective of a morally-bankrupt, and spiritually dark world, we did feel
that we (including our “spiritual family”) represented a light in the
darkness. Yes, often a flickering,
barely noticeable light, but a light nevertheless. It is to that Light that Dolores believed Martin was coming to,
and it was with that desire that he took his final breath. And that was good for Martin.
1 comment:
P.S.
A few days after Martin’s death, I wrote to one of his close friends, Ron Hood, to tell him what happened. Here is Ron’s response:
“Hi Christopher.
“I hope things went well for you today and that you found some peace. I can feel the pain and helplessness of your letter. I think that what you experienced must be the most common nightmare for all of us who take folks into the wilderness. For all those years I took my students into the mountains, each and every time we left for the experience, I worried. When we returned, I rejoiced. No injuries, and thank God, no deaths. I never lost the fear.
“One thing I knew for certain, there is no way to stop fate. All I could ever do was attempt to reduce the potential for accidents and hope that fate would leave me alone. I was lucky.
“You have been at this business for so long, with so many people, that the chances of encountering fate increased to the point where an encounter was unavoidable.
“I’m certain that you know you were not responsible for Martin’s death. It was due. I’ve known Martin for many years. During that time, Martin abused his body in many ways. Martin breathed fumes from his forge, from his cigarettes, and other things. He had a few of this and some of that and I was with him for part of that time. Martin always lived life in the fullest way he knew how. It was only later, after the damage was done, that he began to slow down. His heart operation, his physical condition, and his legendary consumption of things that gave him pleasure finally conspired to release him for the greatest experience of all. You just happened to be there when it happened. That was good for Martin, and bad for you. I am sorry. I wish I could exchange places with you. Martin was my friend and I would have understood his journey because I understood him.
“I can say one unalterable thing about Martin: He was a good man and a good friend. Everything else is part of the legend.
“As an aside, Christopher, I’ve always respected you and while our approaches might be different, I doubt that our personal paths are far apart. I also see you as a colleague and a man for whom I hold deep respect.
“If there is something I can do for you, please let me know.
“A friend. Dr. Ron Hood.”
I don’t recall how I responded to Ron, but this response from him was a great gift to me, and it did much to heal my pain of Martin’s passing.
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