I saw an e-mail about death

Context
I belong to an e-mail list called Fiction-L, which covers reader’s advisory issues. A discussion of “books so good you read them over and over again” led to an exchange between a colleague and me regarding Charlotte’s Web. Some snippets follow:

Colleague - People who don't cry at the end of Charlotte's Web worry me. They are the same people who don't cry when Bambi's mother dies.

Me - Them's fighting words, [name omitted]! Charlotte dies in the natural course of nature, which is a little sad, but in more of a "sighing" than "crying" way. Bambi's mother is brutally murdered by stupid human beings! I not only cry; I tend to leave the room so I can pound my fists on something!

Colleague - They're both tragedies--since when is the loss of a friend to natural death any less painful than one to murder? In either case they are gone, and they aren't coming back. Death is no less final for being natural.


Commentary
I was surprised that my reaction to death was so different from my colleague’s, so I’m trying to figure out where the difference comes from. Is it because I don’t believe death is “final” for anyone? Yes, I’m not only a Christian, with the Pauline view of our demise, but a person who thinks that All Dogs go to Heaven. It scarcely seems worth calling it “heaven” if there won’t be critters there.

That can’t be the only reason for the way I feel though, because then I would have the mirror image of my colleague’s opinion: murder is an equal cause for celebration as succumbing to natural causes.

So why are the circumstances surrounding death important? I think it’s because I also hold the “other” Christian viewpoint on mortality: that it infects all of creation because of human sin. We were made the stewards of Earth, so everything on it suffers the same fate we do. So let’s recap: it’s our fault that animals die in the first place, and in Bambi’s mother’s case, we hasten the process along by setting fire to her habitat.

I think the last piece of the puzzle is this: I’m much more likely to cry about things that make me angry than those that make me sad.

What did you see today?