Regardless of our ways of life, personal touches, and social standing all of us have one and the same end – death. The birth and death are natural issues that equalize people and determine their mortality. The saddest thing is that death exterminates us as who we really are and leaves only our bodies: flesh, skin, bones. The deceased continue to live in the memory of their relatives and friends, but when it is their turn to die, the real us melt in the eternity only with our graves remained. In her essay “Sky Burial,” Alex Mar writes about people and draws the parallel between their souls and bones, between them being dead and alive. This paper aims to discuss the evidence Mar uses in her essay and the primary goal of their usage.
The “Sky Burial” starts with the letter Patricia Robinson wrote to her daughter Mary in 2002 being at hospital with the broken wrist. Patricia was sixty-nine years old and was destined to live seven more years and to die in 2009. In 2014, the author investigates the bones of the deceased Patricia, the only things that left after her physical being. However, what does really determine a human? Answering this question, the author structures her essay with two parallel lines: the one of them refers to present, the presence of Alex Mar in FACTS and the observations of parts of human bodies that remained after their deaths, and the second one relates to the memories about the deceased people and their continued life in the memories of their surrounding persons. Where ones of us see just bones, the others see their husbands, mothers, and friends. When ones of us see just the deceased, the others see the living. What is death really?
Alex Mar uses a lot of evidence to highlight the differences between two lines of the essay. For instance, FACTS is the body farm, the place where people are interested in bodies of the deceased people without the concern about whom they really were and what things they achieved being alive. The first line of the essay is mostly scientific and contains a lot of specific terms, but it is not “humanly” alive. The other line, on the contrary, is sodden with life. It is penetrated with feelings and biographical facts that make it closer to what it means being alive. For example, one can consider the memories about Patty Robinson. Now, Patty Robinson is just her mortal remains, but she was the real human who lived the real life full of emotions and feelings. Patty Robinson had parents, was in love, had PhD in psychology, had children and liked to awaken them to enjoy the moon landing together. All human beings are unique, and she also was unique with her own specific preferences, dislikes, and interests. However, the uniqueness of Patty Robinson was also in her vision and perceiving of death.
The death of Patty Robinson was followed with the sky burial. Her body was partly eaten by vultures, but her body was not the real Patty – the death separated it with her soul. As Mar writes, “Patty believed the best part of her would be airborne” (Mar 350). The body is just the cover; the human is determined with his or her character, deeds, and attitudes. Elaine Johnson remembers her deceased husband Bill – the real Bill, while Mar meets the body of Bill – not the same Bill as before. The way of Patty’s death showed her soul; in Tibetan practices, sky burial provides necessary for living food for birds and animals and symbolizes the life’s impermanence. Used by Alex Mar evidence highlights the reality of the happened events, the reasons and the process of sky burial and reactions on it. Used by Alex Mar evidence helps to support her main argument: human is the creature whose airborne soul can go beyond the body and whose airborne soul can defeat physical death with memories of the living.
Work Cited
Mar, Alex. “Sky Burial.” The Best American Non-Required Reading 2015. Ed. Adam Johnson and the students of 826 National. Boston, New York: A Mariner Original Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. 322-350. Print.
