Large Fierce Mammal

“The Dead Mother and Child” (1897-1899), by Edvard Munch.

“A dragon lives forever but not so little boys.
Painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more,
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

“His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain.
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave.
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave ….”

~ Puff the Magic Dragon, Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow

Puff the Magic Dragon was inspired by a poem written by Leonard Lipton in 1959, and it’s little known that there was a final verse in it that never made its way into the song — Puff’s period of mourning is soothed by the joy of finding another little boy.

I grew up in an atmosphere that was in no way evocative of apprehensions of abandonment, yet I remember an episode of heart wrenching fear that every meaningful adult in my life would die and I would be left to fend for myself. I don’t remember how long it lasted before I mentioned it to my Parents and ultimately came to terms, but I do know its genesis was the death of my Paternal Grandmother, Almeta Pauline (Eisenhauer) Whynacht, on 12 March 1962 at the age of 48 — just short of a month and a half before my 5th birthday.

There comes a time in the life of every child when the realization arrives that people and animals die, and nothing you feel, say, or do will change it.

Your Parents will die.

Every grownup who matters to you will die.

Your most beloved pets will die.

Everyone you know will die.

You will die.

For Life to be Truly meaningful, from that initial epiphany there must grow a relationship with Death as a perpetual and ever so reliable companion. An understanding that Death makes His presence felt every day in ways that have nothing to do with breath being stilled, or hearts ceasing to beat. Just as we accept beginnings, so must we accept endings, and while endings by their very definition are permanent, so too do they mark beginnings — from the death of the lamb, the feast begins.

Just yesterday, and for reasons yet to be determined, oldest LFM Son, Viktor who is just over three months shy of his fifth birthday, spoke aloud his first glimmerings of disquiet in this ever so important rite of passage. His line of inquiry implied that his meditations were anything but born of the moment — they had been simmering for a spell. My immediate thought was, “My Son, you have come to the right place.”

Today, his Wondrous Mother and I are both proud and mournful — proud this dawn broke upon a transcendent albeit still unsettled Viktor, even as we will forever mourn one incarnation of the innocently inquisitive little boy who is gone forever, now that Death has whispered His introduction into his ear.