TALLY HO!!! 

Death is one of those experiences…

 I just want to go on record to say that I hate Death!!! Whew!!! I said it!!! That took a lot of emotional energy to actually say. Let me say it again. I HATE Death! There I said it twice and now I am waiting for some large object to fall down upon my head.. the expectation that some punishment ought to befall me for being so sacrilegious. In my younger days, I used to downsize my ‘hatred’ by taking personal responsibility and saying that I just don’t DO death well!! Well, who in the world does Death well? What was I thinking? 

 But, guess what, I found that there are those folks who to me seem to do Death well… they stay with the dying person while dying. They dying person just easily slips away while sleeping. They have a viewing followed by a lunch, drinks and celebration before going back home…which is truly so comforting. 

 Yet, death for me even though surrounded by comfort and connection is not where I want to be. Phenomenologically speaking…as my buddy Marty used to say: “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.” Martin Heidegger.

Maybe that’s why I hate death, because I was not born as many men who then will die as a single one. I am woman born… which is a whole different experience! Clarissa Pinkola Estes, one of my lovelies…(I have lovelies in my life.. do you?) in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves talks about the ‘Life-Death-Life’ cycle a knowing that dwells deeply within, held as sacred by our inner goddess “La Que Saba”… the one who knows! I knew I knew. 

The ‘Life…Death…Life’ cycle…The earth blooms in spring heads towards renewal through the throes of autumn splendor continuing on into the starkness of winter’s ice and snow blanketing the buds of life waiting to show their bloom. 

 My father just died. He lived 93 long years. He was a gymnast doing straight T layouts on the rings, whipping his legs to and fro over the parallel bars, then spending his middle and later adult years jogging. He went jogging every day listening to Frank Sinatra on his portable CD player hidden in his jacket pocket, singing along, jogging forward and backward along the streets and hills near his home. Just to let you know he broke his hip in his 80’s while jogging backwards!  Yes that’s right….jogging backwards! 

He was a wonderfully nurturing father and loved my mother to the moon and back! He is now reunited with his beloved forever. And, he lives on through me and his grandsons as we tell stories about Pap’s antics. By the way, he taught all his caregivers, nurses and doctors the meaning of his favorite phrase…“Tally Ho!”… onward and upward!!! 

 Here’s to you Pap… “Tally HO”!!!