PEACE, PAWS, LOOKING UP!
A write up of Tucson Online MST Friendly & Fearless Death Cafe
We had a sweet beginning to 2023! This year’s mascot is a sunny yellow rabbit we’ve named Peace.
We talked about our beloved animal companions, how they bring us comfort and solace, and fill our lives with joy, laughter and daily wonder. We zoomed out for a moment to a big picture of how wonderful it would be if structures were in place to care for everyone, ourselves, all the furry, feathered, and other beings that enrich our lives so much. What a relief it would be to subtract the common struggles of how to care for ourselves and our animal companions in times of change. Illness, natural (and perhaps unnatural) disasters like climate and war, deaths, aging, all these things that bring struggle and heartache.
It’s always the countless small organizations and millions of open hearts and volunteer hours, the kindness of people that work tirelessly, to heal and home animals, to “rescue” those in need, and to honor the farewells, the beauty of a life lived. Perhaps someday we will wake up to how it really is to live our lives, a life that includes death, and let go of whatever holds us back from deeply cherishing every moment.
Here are some ways we talked about to do just that. Visit a cat café, like El Jefe in Southern Arizona, read a good book like Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer; A Man Who Would Cure the World, enjoy the super cute musings of an existential egg, Gudetama, from the latest Netflix series, where G considers death at every flip of the spatula, and don’t forget to look in the sky for the green comet passing by Earth right now – seize this moment – you won’t get another chance for 50,000 years.