I debated for weeks whether to write about something as personal as the death of my brother Kevin on my (semi)professional blog and to try to explain how this event affected my view of life. Ultimately, I gave myself permission after deciding that it’s a fallacy to think that anyone can seal their personal and professional selves into watertight compartments. The personal side of me draws meaning from what I know of anthropology and evolutionary biology. I agree with the physicist Brian Greene, who once wrote that science isn’t merely about facts and theories; it’s also about the perspective those facts and theories provide. Science widens our horizons. Likewise, my academic side draws inspiration from my personal history, including the people who have been part of my life. I can say unequivocally that I was drawn into anthropology because of the many friends of different ethnicities I’ve had, which made me curious about the biological and cultural diversity of humanity. All of these things are significant events in my life, as is the death of my brother, after whom this website is named.

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of my younger brother Kevin, who died after his SUV swerved off the side of a small highway and hit a tree. He was only 23 years old, and left behind a young wife and an infant son. I was 25 and in graduate school at the time, three hundred miles away, and didn’t learn what happened until my father called me at 6 AM the following morning. To this day, any time the phone rings in the early morning or late at night, I am automatically filled with a sense of dread. As my father repeatedly asked me if I was sitting down before telling me what had happened, I immediately knew that someone close to me had died. I didn’t care if I was seated, standing, or on my head; I just wanted to know what happened. After what seemed like an eternity, I relented and told my father that I was in fact sitting down. For the rest of my life, his words will be tattooed in my mind: “Your brother Kevin was in a car accident last night, and he’s no longer with us.”

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The grief was immediate and paralyzing. My first thoughts were fairly rational: “are Ana and Daniel (his wife and son) OK?” Thankfully, they were, as they were not in the car at the time. Then illogical thoughts ran through my mind, like “I can’t go home for the funeral yet. I have to grade final exams for Mike Little’s class.” (Of course, Mike was kind and completely understanding, and took over all my grading duties). But many unanswerable questions consumed me. First, I wondered what Kevin’s last thoughts were. Did he know it was the end? Did he even have time to think at all? Was he ever in pain, or should I accept at face value the notion that he died instantly in the crash and didn’t suffer? Who can ever know?  More importantly, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that I’ll never get to talk to my brother again. Ever. There is no concept deeper or more incomprehensible than forever. To think about such things can be disorienting, or worse.

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The next few months were a fog of tears and spontaneous emotional breakdowns. My fiancé, Debby, and I were getting married in early July, not even two months after Kevin’s accident, but everyone in the family encouraged us to go forward with the wedding because we needed something to celebrate after the tragedy. It was a welcome distraction and somewhat cathartic, but also bittersweet. Something was conspicuously missing, and still is. How could it not be? Someone who should be here simply is not.

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I’m not claiming to be unique. Almost everyone has suffered from the death of someone close to them, and if they haven’t, then it’s only a matter of time. Certainly, many people have had more tragedies in their lives than I have. Kevin’s death has impacted the people in his life in various ways, and I don’t presume to speak on their behalf, only what his passing has meant for me. Since that time, I’ve probably become more preoccupied with death than a healthy 35 year-old American should be. ‘Obsessed’ would be an overstatement, but it was a sobering smack in the face, reminding me that death is the elephant in the room that everyone tries to ignore, but ultimately we cannot.

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At some point, everyone is forced to accept death as a natural part of life, but we are nonetheless inclined to view it with trepidation and sadness (I’m no exception, obviously). Much of that fear may result from the mystery factor, since no person can ever describe authoritatively what it’s like to be dead. Even near-death experiences cannot suffice. Another fear must simply be of non-existence, of losing consciousness, of ceasing to be. Forever. I suspect that even the most stoic, faithful individuals among us harbor those fears subconsciously. We may be able to temper our grief by believing in an afterlife or the idea that some part of us, such as a soul, continues on without the body. However,  grieving over death may be instinctive, as all cultures grieve in some way. We may even find it in other species.

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The evidence is accumulating that apes have at least some awareness of mortality. I’ve written before about the case of the juvenile chimpanzee Flint and his mother, Flo. Essentially, Flint died from refusing to eat for a month after his mother passed away, hinting strongly that his grief led to outright depression. Other case studies support the notion that apes can grieve or are at least aware of death in a general sense, if not their own mortality. In a famous 2009 National Geographic photo (above), a group of chimpanzees at a primate rescue center in Cameroon appear to be captivated by the deceased body of their former groupmate, Dorothy. In another example from a safari park in Scotland, chimpanzees were videotaped gently caressing and grooming a 50 year-old female named Pansy who was fatally ill, as if to comfort her. After she died, researchers noted that Pansy’s son, daughter, and a friend appeared to check her for signs of life. Pansy’s daughter slept next to her body, in an area of the exhibit where she had never done so before. In addition, the three survivors were described as being ‘subdued’ for weeks afterward. On the other hand, there are also multiple videos of chimpanzee mothers carrying or protecting the bodies of their deceased infants for weeks after they died, raising the question of whether the mothers recognized that their infants were in fact dead. To the zoologist Dora Biro, mothers do realize when their infants are dead because they understood that the infants were immobile and unable to cling to their mothers’ bodies by themselves, which they normally can.

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So, what’s going on here?

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It is extremely difficult to discern exactly what an ape is thinking, but if we accept the evidence that we share a recent common ancestor with them, then it makes sense that we should share not only similar anatomies, but also brain structures and behaviors, at least when compared with more distantly related species. In light of the above examples, it is not too great a leap to suggest that chimpanzees share with us the intellectual capacity to recognize mortality as well as emotional states such as grief, though more evidence is needed. I think that their behavior resonates with us because we can see parallels to our own emotions, though there is always the danger of anthropomorphizing and seeing something that is not actually there. In other words, it is important to avoid highlighting only the similarities we have with apes while ignoring or downplaying the differences. For example, human mothers do not carry their deceased infants around as chimpanzees do. One possible explanation for why chimp mothers do this is that it indicates the strength of the mother-infant bond and a reluctance to let go, but it is difficult to be sure.

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Even without the anecdotal evidence of grief and awareness of mortality in chimpanzees, we can still say with confidence that grief has deep roots, since it is a human universal. In that context, the pain that accompanies the death of a loved one (particularly a premature or unjust death) may be inescapable for most of us.

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And yet…

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And yet, even being fully aware of the fact that death and grief are inevitable, I refuse to focus on them and yield  to a pessimistic view because there is too much to admire about life. There is a path to a more sanguine perspective, and this is where science helps center things a little, at least for me. When thinking about death, it is also necessary to consider its converse – life –  and how incredibly fortunate we are to be alive. One of my favorite quotes on this comes from the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

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Read that quote again if you have to until it sinks in. It’s beyond profound. However, it may not go far enough. To say we are “lucky” to be alive seems inadequate. A better way of putting it might be that the odds against any individual being alive today actually existing were microscopically, infinitesimally, almost incalculably minute.  If we accept an evolutionary perspective, and I think we should given the accumulated evidence, then we can say that every species alive today (E. coli, komodo dragons, jellyfish, rosebushes, & humans) shares a common ancestor that dates back to some point in time, possibly as early as 3.9 billion years ago. From those earliest life forms to us is an unbroken thread, with continuity at each intersection, at each generation, eventually arriving at all contemporary organisms, including us (from our own egocentric point of view). How unlikely was it that we’d be here? It’s hard to say exactly, but we can make some estimates based on the number of generations we have in our ancestry.

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Consider that for most of human history, women probably had their first child around age 22 (we can infer this from recent, technologically simple ‘natural fertility populations’ that lacked artificial birth control). We also know that chimpanzee females have their first infant around age 14 years. If we consider these to be the generation times in these two species, we can split the difference and say that the average hominin generation time was around 18 years since our lineage split from chimpanzees around 6 million years ago. Though this method is admittedly crude, if we divide the 6 million years of hominins that existed between us and chimps by 18 years, we get about 333,000 generations where our ancestors walked bipedally. If at any point in those 333,000 generations our lineage was broken, then you wouldn’t be here (and you obviously are here, so good for you).

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Plus, that’s just for our ancestry as hominins. For a more complete model, we’d have to factor in ALL of the generations in our lineage over the full 3.9 billion years of life. As we get closer to the earlier stages of life, generation times of our earlier ancestors were quicker- much quicker- before we evolved into moderate sized mammals such as apes and humans.  For example, some bacteria have a generation time of 10 minutes. What this means is that we’re talking very big numbers here in terms of how many generations preceded us, meaning that there were an astronomical number of opportunities for one of our ancestors to drop the baton before passing on their genes to the next generation. And all it would take would be for one link in the chain, one generation, to be broken to have prevented us from existing. Anything from failing to outrun a predator, eating a poisonous berry, a famine, or just a freak accident could have broken the chain.

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Oh, and one more thing… if we consider that males in sexually reproducing species, of which we are one of course, release on the order of millions to billions of sperm cells per copulation, the odds of any one particular sperm cell reaching the egg and becoming one of your ancestors was literally one in a million, at best. Then, take that number and multiply itby the 1.2 billion years of generations among sexual reproducers, add in the remaining number of generations we spent as asexual reproducers, and you have a ballpark idea for the odds of your own existence. The bottom line is that the deck was stacked against any single one of us being here (to put it mildly). We weren’t guaranteed to be here, but we ARE here. To me, that is a very comforting notion.

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Evolutionarily speaking, what each of us have done is the equivalent of winning the cosmic lottery. There were an astronomical number of closing doors we had to pass through to make it here, and each of us made it through every single one. Life can be a struggle, but the struggle seems to be worth it because species endure despite living in ecological niches that can’t be very pleasant. Consider what it would be like to be something other than a human being, such as a mosquito, algae in Antarctica, or thermophile microbes living at boiling temperatures in deep-sea vents or the hot springs of Yellowstone. To us, that doesn’t sound like very much fun at all, yet those species (like all others) plod along. Why do they do it? In Bill Bryson’s words:

“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours-arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. But- and here’s an interesting point- for the most part it doesn’t want to be much.”

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I don’t think I’d want to be a lichen either, but having never been one I cannot say. However, if the option were between being a lichen or being nothing at all, the choice is obvious. The lichen life cycle may not be the most exciting thing in the world to us, but it must be somewhat successful simply because lichens have avoided extinction. Species have many adaptations and strategies to exist: from bacteria that reproduce every 10 minutes to bristlecone pine trees that live over 4,000 years. Or, imagine what it would be like to be a Madagascar chameleon (Furcifer labordi). From conception to death, it has a lifespan of less than a year, making it the shortest living tetrapod (4 -limbed animal) in the world. In fact, it only lives for 4 to 5 months after hatching from the egg. Why do this? Simply put, this is a genetic strategy to speed up the life cycle in order to reach the age of reproduction for the chance to pass along their genes. For some species, that strategy must be rapid because harsh ecological conditions prevent them from living too long. Other species, such as ours, can take a bit longer. If all goes right for us, our genes may allow us to survive for 80 or 90 years. However, for many people in the world life expectancy is much lower than that, which seems patently unfair.

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No matter how long or short, life is an incomparable gift, and as humans we are fortunate enough to have evolved sophisticated brains that allow us to contemplate the nature of our own existence.  It is our chance to observe, explore, question, feel awe and wonder, experience love and pain (hopefully more of the former), help others, and appreciate the beauty and magnificence in even the most mundane details of our universe, from atoms to astronomy to altruism to art. No matter where one finds inspiration- religion, philosophy, science- I think we can agree that an opportunity at life is precious.

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I’ve tried (and succeeded, somewhat) to see life this way ever since losing Kevin. To console my parents, I suggested that one way to think of his passing was that we had him for 23 years, which is far too short, but infinitely better than not having known him at all. We are also fortunate that before he died he gave us a sister-in-law and a nephew. When I think of life in this way, I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to be alive, to be conscious at this place and time in the universe. Despite my shortcomings, the mistakes I make, and the painful experiences I may have, they are all dwarfed by the opportunity to exist, to live.

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To me, this is the proper way to view life. It is temporary. It is not guaranteed to anyone. It is sometimes painful. But it is also a heroic struggle to exist against the odds. As Darwin wrote, “there is grandeur in this view of life.” He was right. Life is –  above all else-  beautiful.

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