#0092 | our deaths are kindred

Submitted by Anonymous in New York City.

Here’s Anonymous’ story:

“When I was very young – 4 or 5, maybe younger, water wings were still necessary—my siblings and I would go swimming all the time. All the time. My childhood in South Florida was a perennial summer; it’s significant, though maybe not to this story, that time in my formative years went unmarked by falling leaves or freezing rain, death and rebirth, the whole Whitman thing. All memories set against a single, static backdrop of verdant paradise, like at a novelty photo kiosk in the mall.

So one day we approach the pool and there is a crab there, idly wandering its depths. This was not uncommon: torrential afternoon rains flooded our neighborhood crabs’ holes, which they dug a few hundred yards away near the sea wall. Yes, however little they contributed to the community, there were neighborhood fiddler crabs. In these instances, we refused to share the pool with any crab(s) present, since we remained unconvinced that they would not swim, like sharks, to feast on the blood of the young, and the water wings of the younger.

Dad, guardian and erstwhile crab bouncer, was summoned to remove the intruder. Upon retrieval, prompted by parental impulses unknown to me, he decided he would educate us in compassion and forgiveness where parochial school had so clearly failed us (our inclement judiciary had ruled that the crime of interfering with Marco Polo was punishable by death). With such guilt and shame as only the reprimanded toddler and practicing Catholic are capable, we agreed yes, we had been such animals, we should not kill the crab! Yes, set him free! We are all but God’s creatures, pitiful and equal in our errors! Staring my siblings and I in the face was nothing less than the opportunity to forgive Crab, spiritual and existential coeval, to realize the necessity of allegiance to a moral universe.

So, with great enthusiasm (Good triumphs over Evil on the patio), we accompanied Dad to the driveway where Crab would be reborn. No sooner do we cheer Crab forward, onward to a new crab life and a new crab home– inherently superior as it is the result of our compassion and as it is not our pool, respectively—than the family minivan, captained by errand runner and erstwhile charon, Mom, careens around the corner, crushing the crab and my capacity for empathy. That’s when I stopped feeling.”