Death and self

I think I watch too many brutal detective series. Mostly to play with the puzzle, to see if I can work it out before the protagonists do (which is of course always easier when all you see are the necessary clues with a little light obfuscation). And it doesn't usually go much deeper than that (except of course watching mortuary scenes during dinner, which can always be a little offputting). But tonight I was watching Cold Case whilst doing something else, and looked up to see that moment between life and death, that change from a moving sentient thing into a body. And thought again about how contradictory my beliefs on life and death seem to be, even to myself.

The other thing I thought about was something I saw on holiday recently. I'd taken a boat to the top of the Bosphorus, to look out over the Black Sea; a futile effort in itself since the day was so misty that I could see a few large boats and just enough water to sense that the Sea was indeed very very big. And as I walked up the hill to the local castle for a second time in the hope that the mist had cleared a little, someone ran over a cat with their car. I didn't see them run over the cat, but it was a single road with no sidestreets, and the car had been going fast and just narrowly missed me on the lane less than a minute earlier. And I rounded the corner to see the cat in the road, smashed but fighting, with the car gone and people walking past it, seeing but not pausing. It was probably only 100 yards, but it seemed to take an age to walk, to stand by the cat to see if there was anything I could do, and all the time the cat fought, struggled to get its paws on the ground, fought to get itself up, presumably up and out away from the danger. And then it was still. Stiff then relaxed, tenaciously alive to body, bleeding out to blood flowing down the hill. I've seen that moment before, watched my father break the neck of a wild creature that was too injured to survive. But this time I felt helpless. Angry at the driver, at the people who didn't stop, but aware too of the culture difference between us that made them accept death and ignore just a cat.

On my things to do pile is a letter from the woman who cradled my husband by the road as he died. It's been there a while (there have been other things going on, mainly at work, but they did take over precedence late last year). She's a friend of a friend, and he only connected the two people by accident. I believed in the continuation of spirit when it happened; that part of a person continues for a while after their death. But the cat was such a live-to-dead thing, a there then gone moment. And if I can be shocked by a cat. If.