Dear Russell,

It has been almost five years now since the day I sat holding your hand in the Intensive Care Unit at San Francisco General Hospital. As you know, I talk to you often. Your death a few days later was a turning point in my life. My life today is as different as it possibly could be from the life I had when you knew me. I must admit that I have changed my life in part to get away from the death which consumed me for ten years. I will never forget this and have not run away as some have suggested. The enormity of what happened in San Francisco will affect me until the day when I join you. Today you are very much on my mind and there is a good reason I am compelled to write to you now.

This is the fourth season I have lived in a small tourist village in the Greek islands. When I first came here I struggled with my concepts of life and death contrasted to this place where shepherds kill and skin their goats and sheep just a few feet from my door. To adjust in the beginning I forced myself to watch the skinning of a goat. I had to accept that much of the world lives a life very different from mine, so believing in a strict vegetarian point of view is more than impractical, perhaps it’s even arrogant. I have been able to some extent heal my repulsion to the process of killing and eating animals. In watching the process and the attitudes of those engaged in the process I have learned much about myself and the culture I was raised in. I do not and probably never will share the idea that animals are just ignorant beings for us to exploit. I cannot help but see a parallel to this idea in the way some humans treat each other. I have come to understand the hunter spirit of the male psyche now, but honor it only in the context of respect for nature and our own place in the universe. I can see the difference between those who honor a ritual in their killing to sustain life. Many in my world have merely adopted the macho sport of killing to prove their manhood though. For myself their meat is poison.

I have retained my habit of befriending animals and giving them human names. For three years I fed a goat everyday near the castle ruins above the village. I named her Lucy because she reminded me of my dog Lucy in San Francisco. Lucy was very mischievous, an expert in unzipping tourist’s backpacks to steal their food. This spring the shepherd told me she had died during the winter. The shepherd and others in the village find it difficult to understand why I have her photo hanging above my door. I suspect Lucy was really killed by the shepherd.

This year I made friends with the pure white wild cat I had seen in past years. She took to sleeping outside my door at night like a sentry there to protect me. I gave her milk in the mornings and other scraps of food during the day. I had convinced her that some humans could be trusted. After a considerable effort on my part we came to that point of love/respect that one only feels in a relationship with an animal. I was ready to give her a name and enter the kind of human-animal relationship the villagers find impossible to understand.

Today my new friend appeared in my doorway at about 2:00 p.m. She looked at me as if to cry out for help. She twisted her head half way around then suddenly her body followed. She was lying on her side, legs shaking as foam came out of her mouth. Every minute or two her whole body would convulse, then she would try to cry out to no avail. She kept pointing her body toward my door as if she wanted to come to me for help. I stood paralyzed with terror, trying to understand what I should do.

As I listened to her choking I was transported back to that moment in ICU when the nurse would push the catheter down your throat. I could feel your hand squeezing mine as I watched you shaking your head in vain, trying to be heard above all the fears and possible law suits which made us all blind to compassion. I stood watching the suffering for at least thirty minutes before I finally understood the plea you have sent through the cat. Five years later I have had my chance to redeem myself.

I stood above the cat with my rolled-up beach mat in my hand. I gently pressed one end of the mat on her neck. At the moment her body stopped shaking I felt myself at peace. Now the fear and judgment seemed ridiculous in contrast to this right thing I had done. I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the floor crying for quite some time. I wasn’t crying because I had killed someone I loved. I was crying for all of the moments I had let slip by while I wasted my life thinking about what was right. I cried for every time I had rationalized away what I knew in my heart all along.

I buried my friend below some rocks overlooking the village. Those who sit upon these rocks will be inspired to mention the sacredness of this place. They will remember their connection to the primal spirit the material world has distracted us from. It is those some see as inferior who have the most to teach us about what is real.