I sure would like to know how all of this works.
At least, I think I do.
But the fact of the matter is, none of us really know, and none of us ever will until death do us part.
I like to believe there is more that happens outside of our human awareness and our human existence. I like to believe this is happening right now, all around us, and we are not heightened enough to see, hear, understand, or experience it.
Mary Nichols started me thinking about all of this. Mary Ann Nichols.
The picture of her, which appeared in my email early this morning, was a photo taken after she died. I could tell she was lying in her coffin, where her human body would remain.
I want to tell you what little I know of her life because I hope we will regard her as a person, with a real life, like you and me. And not just some piece of history. Not just a name.
That short glimpse of her life began when she was born into this world on today’s date, on August 26, 1845, in Dean Street, Soho, London. He last name, at birth, was Walker, and she was the second of three children born to Edward Walker, a locksmith, and Caroline (née Webb), a laundress.
There isn’t too much known about her early life. Little Mary Walker probably went to school like most young children. It may have been that her family was not wealthy. So, she may have been a servant somewhere. In the 1850s, one in nine girls — over the age of 10 — worked as domestic servants for wealthy homes. A lot of poor children often had to work instead of going to school. They’d often work with their parents at home or in workshops, making matchboxes or sewing.
At the young age of 18, Mary Walker married a guy named William Nichols. After they wed, the couple found a little place at 30–31 Bouverie Street. But, it must have been tough to make ends meet. They soon moved in with her father at 131 Trafalgar Street.
Mary Ann Nichols and her husband William began having kids like crazy. Between 1866 and 1879, the couple had five children.
In September of 1880, they moved into their own home, paying a small weekly rent. But they weren’t getting along, and they ended their marriage. William took four of the children and moved to a new address.
William was accused of having had some sordid affair with the nurse who had attended the birth of their final child. William claimed he left because of his wife’s heavy drinking and that he had only embarked upon an affair after Mary had left him. Much, much later, he would be telling authorities that his wife had deserted him and was practicing prostitution.
Over the following years, Mary amassed a lengthy police record, although all of her arrests were for minor offenses such as drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and prostitution. She had hit a rough spot in her life, a place from which she would never recover.
By 1881, Mary described herself as a charwoman. That was a cleaning woman who would go into several houses and work for a few hours at each place. But in truth, she was also walking the streets at night as a prostitute.
Nichols was last seen alive by Emily Holland, walking alone down Osborn Street at approximately 2:30 a.m. on August 31, 1881. — about one hour before her death. Holland would tell authorities that Mary was notably drunk, at one stage slumping against the wall of a grocer’s shop.
Emily attempted to persuade Mary to go home, but Mary refused, stating: “I have had my lodging money three times today, and I have spent it.”
And that was that. Mary Ann Nichols was the first victim of Jack the Ripper. She was 5 feet 2 inches tall and had brown eyes. Terribly alone at the time of her death.
I’m getting long here, but all of this made me wonder where Jack the Ripper is today. Authorities never figured out who he was. Long dead and gone, that is for sure.
But, if our life just “ends” here on earth, as some people believe — if we really all just turn back into dirt and nothing more — then what is the difference? Who cares? Horrible people are just the same as amazing and wonderful people in the end. All piles of dirt. So. Why try?
For that very reason, I think there is much more to all of this. Right now, it spins all around us, the energy, the life, the nether world, the network of angels, the forces of our souls.
This is a world, an existence of energy. We are beings made up of energy, with every cell having life and breath. It doesn’t disappear when our bodies give out. That energy goes on.
It is a scientific law that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. And so we go. We go on.
At least. I think so.
But none of us know, for sure. Not yet.
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“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
― Will Rogers
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“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
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“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
― Walt Whitman
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The things in front of us that we cannot see
