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Yelping Joyfully into that Good Night…
‘Make Ole’ is Hawaiian for ‘death’. Personally, I’ve never handled death very well. It’s the reason I studiously avoid funerals, memorial services, and any other social gatherings associated with or celebrating the end of someone’s (or something’s) life. The only memorial service I truly regret having missed is the paddle-out for Auntie Rell Sunn, back in 1998, but that was an impossibility for me at the time.
When my father died (I was 4 years at the time), I was at least spared whatever possible latent psychological problems that event might have posed, by not being forced to attend the burial. In fact, I didn’t even know about it until some years later. Death was a taboo subject in my household and that was both a good and a bad thing, as I now recognise.
Years later, when my mother died, the subsequent details were taken care of by others; there was no ‘viewing’ of the remains, no eulogy, no service, and cremation obviated the need for a burial. I remained largely sheltered from death, from that end to life that all living beings undergo and that all sentient beings reflect upon until their own appointment with the reaper occurs.
My first real introduction to death and the emotional loss it creates came when the first of my wonderful Siberians passed on, about 8 years ago. The name on his pedigree was ‘Dylan’s Dynamite…
