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Marjan the lion   One morning, I helped dig a wolf’s grave. We stood around,  taking turns with the shovel. At first, there was something exciting about it. But soon, the novelty wore off.  Most people dig holes for plants, little divots in the earth out of which they hope new life will grow skyward in the warm summer months. What does it say about our understanding of life and death that we bury the living so close to the surface, knowing how fragile they are and how easily they can be extinguished, while we bury the dead so deep, as if in acknowledgement of their vast power? It was my first grave. It was also my first time realizing that movies always skip ahead, showing a guy taking the first scoop of earth, then flashing forward to a time when he is sweating and standing in a six-foot hole. The wolf, who was actually a wolf/dog hybrid, had been a behemoth. He was essentially a rescue, living out his days in his own pen away from the pack of full-blooded timber wolves nearby, gnawing on kibble and roadkill deer bones from animals we would go pick up in my friend’s Jeep Wrangler. I would often stroll back there and nurse a beer, staring at his big paws and deep, yellow eyes. He always seemed like a conjuration of Buck, the Jack London protagonist.  When he died of old age, and we gathered in the yard to bury him, his vast body transformed from something majestic into a big, furry logistical hurdle. Like so many things in life, I did not realize how hard digging was until I did it. The first couple feet were easy, but as the morning wore on, it seemed like the loose earth was growing back beneath our feet, tumbling into the pit as we sweated and slid the metal blade into the ground over and over again, the sound of the spade sharp and raspy as each little pebble cried out in agony while we worked.  Eventually, we started finding excuses to go inside. To use the bathroom. To get a drink. To find a shirt not squelching with sweat. These sojourns took longer and longer as we looked to widen the time between shifts. I don’t think, at that tender age, only 20, having only lived as long as that wolf-dog’s death was ago, we ever stopped to give thanks that we were alive and able to feel the hot ache of the labor, that we were there and the great beast whose body lay beside the growing pit, was not. But he was there, in a way, and he probably still is today.  The residue of remarkable life is all around us, and under us. We are generally judged for how we treat the living, not the dead.  Four years ago, a massive blizzard hit Istanbul. When it did, the city’s shop owners opened their doors and let in many of the stray dogs and cats. If you ever want to feel a little warmer inside, go online and look up images from that cold night. The great emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius pointed out that kindness is unconquerable, so long as it is without flattery or hypocrisy.  Afghanistan is in the news a lot these days, as we watch from our relative comfort and peace as people’s lives there fall into despair. Afghanistan is many things, and one of them is the former home of Marjan the lion.  Marjan lived at the Kabul Zoo. In 1995, a soldier wanting to prove his braveness climbed down into his enclosure. The lion pounced on him and killed him. It is sad, but somewhat apt. I remember, a few years ago, a woman climbed into the giraffe pen at the zoo in Madison. She was kicked by the huge animal, and when the county planned to fine her, too, she pointed out that being kicked by a giraffe was probably an appropriate punishment for her mistake, so the monetary punishment probably wasn’t needed.  The really sad part at the Kabul Zoo came the following day, when the dead man’s grieving brother threw a grenade into Marjan’s enclosure. The lion pounced on it, like a kitten, and it exploded underneath him. The blast blew out half his teeth, leaving him blind and deaf and limping for the rest of his life. Yet still, he lived on, a grizzled icon of life’s inspiring insistence upon itself. In fact, already old, he lived for another seven years, which is longer than many wild lions live at all. The man was attacked and killed by an angry mob shortly after he threw the grenade.  Despite warfare in the city, people who loved the lion continued caring for him every day, until he died of extreme old age in 2002. Kindness is, in its own way, unconquerable. He is buried there, so as you see images of strife today, know that Marjan is still there, in a way.