Death of a Brother

This is mid-spring here in the Rockies and the landscape is just now greening up for a wonderful in not short-lived summer.  Sadly, the bears here have had to deal with an 8 year drought as best they can, which means when they find no natural browse in the back country, they come to civilization, usually with bad effect.
     A 2 year-old was hit and killed last night crossing our one highway in the valley.  When I got there, he was breathing his last, paws placed palms together almost in supplication.  The vehicle that hit him didn't stop, didn't move him off the road, didn't care.  A 2 ton lump of steel and plastic, the product of mining, drilling and the exportation of labor.  Hurtling along, uncaring and unknowing, more likely.
     And so, one death of one bear.  What is the effect?  One less bear multiplied by all the residents of our valley, that's what.  That means that the cumulative loss is really 30,000.  For that one bear is now gone forever for each of us living here.  Maybe for each of us everywhere.
     Bears have always been special to me.  According to The Medicine Wheel, I belong to Bear Clan, which makes sense.
     Growing up at the resort I would wander down to the fish cleaning shack gathering up pine cones to hurl at the sides of the shack.  That would usually be enough to let the bears inside licking the cleaning counters and the insides of the now-empty garbage cans know that someone was coming.  They would wander out of the double door looking at me as if to say, "Don't bother, brother, there is nothing in there."  Then they would amble off into the deep woods.  Their quite shuffle never letting anyone know the speed and agility they possessed.
     So, now, we pave our valley floor with lane after lane of blacktop and concrete so that more and more Detroit and Tokyo gas powered symbols of our insecurities and laziness can save a minute or two in their commute.
     The river is now effectively cut off from the bear as they come down from the hills to get a drink, and they have to brave a gauntlet of speeding steel and rubber to slake their simple thirst.
     And so, another Brother lies dead on the road, his paws placed praying for one more breath, a bit of water, maybe some acorns.  But that is not his fate, as I make sure that that my long held seat in Hell is reserved and I send this bear into oblivion.

      Death comes to us all, but is inflicted on the few.  The innocents that have Death shoved on them, thrust on them and brought to them unwitting and unwilling I don't get used to.

     People ask me, though, if I do get "used to it", meaning seeing death in all its forms and not have it affect me any longer. 
     My only answer is that death is, for me, far more real than it may be for those asking the question.  For me, it is not abstract, surreal or unknown.  I have held it, seen it and dealt it. 
     It still affects me, but I grasp that it is something very, very authentic and unyielding, and I can go on with my job, my responsibilities.  I grasp this reality deep within, somehow, this hard and fast fact.  I believe that this may have been my first step to no longer fearing Death.
     But, no, I never get used to it.  If I were to do so, I think that would be the first internal step towards my own death.
     My brother's death on the side of the road affects me, touches me, lets me know that I am alive and that without such feelings, I would be much less the human being.
     .