A Screaming Deer, A Ripe Strawberry

No Escape and "O, so Delicious"

A screaming deer fleeing for its life turns to look at me.  Fierce, bitter-bright eyes, locking onto mine.  She’s not looking for help or pity or comfort.  Or escape.  She knows there’s no escape.  That dark gaze wants but one thing.  A witness to its passing, its inevitable and terrifying end.

I never actually saw the deer.  It was too dark.  I only heard its pounding hooves passing behind our home, its terrified scream splitting the night.  But I “see” it nonetheless.  For days, weeks, afterwards, even now, I see it. Screaming past me with my mother’s eyes. I’d watched her passing too. Her slow walk across the room in her walker, staring at me with those bitter-bright eyes. Her inevitable and terrifying end.

No escape. The unalterable, unutterable fact underwriting our existence. We avert our eyes every-which way as long as we can. Until we can’t. Until the time comes to bear witness, to refuse to look away, to let the fact of another’s inevitable passing—or our own—stare us down, and lock our gaze.  No escape. 

All we can do is be there, fully present in that moment, bearing witness.

There’s a story about a Zen monk fleeing for his life, a tiger at his heels, chasing him over the edge of a cliff where he grabs hold of a branch. He dangles there just out of reach of the tiger’s jaws snapping at his head, while below him another tiger half-climbs the cliff to snap at his feet. No escape. 

Just then the monk sees a fat juicy strawberry dangling from a nearby vine. He lets go with one hand to swing toward the strawberry where he plucks it loose and pops it into his mouth. 

“Oh, so delicious!” he sighs, savoring its sweetness.

Here’s another story.  A true story caught on video by a group of tourists on safari in Africa. You can watch it here on YouTube. Here’s how it goes:

A herd of water buffalo approach a river where a pride of lions are resting.  The lions chase the buffalos, separating a calf from the herd and dragging it away. The struggling calf slips into the river. The lions are pulling the calf ashore when a crocodile grabs hold of its leg and tries to drag it under. The lions and crocodile play tug-of-war with the calf, until the lions win and pull it ashore. No escape.

Then something unimaginable happens. The fleeing buffalos suddenly stop running, reverse course, and head back, charging at the lions and chasing them away. The little calf, who moments before had been caught between the lions’ jaws and the crocodile’s teeth, gets to her feet, shakes her rump, and walks away with the herd, apparently unharmed.

What does it all mean?

These two stories of the monk and the calf roll around and around in my mind, the same way the screaming deer’s flight and my mother’s slow struggle across the room are rolled together in my memory.

What do they have in common, the monk and the baby buffalo?  One savoring life while death snaps at his heels, another’s life being saved from the grip of death by what would only seem a miracle.  The saving and savoring of life.  It’s a theme I turn to again and again in my writing.

Perhaps our escape from life’s inevitable and terrifying end, like the monk’s, is by embracing life’s sweetness, savoring all it has to offer, living life in the oh-so-delicious present moment.

Perhaps our escape is like the calf being plucked from the jaws of death by something too miraculous to even imagine.

Perhaps at the very end, when there finally is no escape from death, like that deer, like my mother, and that awful inevitable conclusion chasing us down grabs hold, something unimaginable happens.  Some unseen hand plucks us like a ripe strawberry from the jaws of death and swallows us whole, saving and savoring all the sweetness of our brief lives, and reaffirming with a sigh, “Oh, so delicious!”

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[The photos were taken from an Amtrak train window on a trip to San Diego where I wrote most of this post]

Two related posts:

A Deer’s Scream - Beauty & Brutality at Home and in the Hills of Vietnam

13 Ways of Looking at Dying, Just Before and the Moment After - A Short Story