This is the first in a series about death and dying, and the tender time between the death and the faring well. Thus the series itself is called 'Faring well'.
The sculpture in the photo has a small ngarara or lizard wrapped around the base of the koru, the fern frond. The ngarara are the creatures of Hine Nui Te Po, our death goddess here in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
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Orlando was born sick. His life started with him struggling to eat, and then got harder. The doctors couldn’t work out what was wrong, but after some weeks it seemed plain he would die.
His parents were young students. They had no money and nowhere stable to live; if you were judgmental you could say they were unprepared for parenthood. They were kind, thoughtful, intelligent, and connected.
On Orlando’s last day alive, the medical staff unhooked all the machines and they and his parents took him outside. They showed him the sky and the rose bushes. They told him how beautiful the world was. They sang to him. The head neonatologist had composed a song just for him. He died outside, in the rose garden, loved, inspirational. He must have been inspirational, because I remember him down all these years.
They took him home, as is the Maori way, and kept him with them in their bedroom. They needed to take him to their turangawaewae, their home or ‘place to stand’, and bury him there in the urupa, the cemetery belonging to their hapu (sub tribe). This was harder than it seemed.
They had no money and no car. It was just on Christmas, and public transport was all booked up. An uncle offered them the use of his car. I rang the ferry company, to try and get them across Cook Strait between the South and North Islands. At first the ferry company were very understanding and found a ticket on the fully booked ferry. Then came another sticking point. They would agree to have Orlando on the ferry providing he was in an approved casket and was kept in the car. This is a big roll on roll off ferry. You drive on, park your car among all the cars in the hold, and walk onto the passenger areas, and then when you arrive you are all ordered back into your cars and you drive off.
This upset the young parents. They had thought they could just walk on to the ferry holding Orlando in a basket. They did not want to be parted from him, not for the three hour journey, not for any time at all. For a while there was a tearful impasse.
By this time I had worked my way up to the senior management of the ferry company. I outlined what I thought were the principles the company might use to govern their decision making. They sympathised with the young couple who had just lost a baby. They also did not want to have a dead baby among the passengers, who might be shocked if they happened to see him. Fair enough. How can we work with this? Let’s not say no to this. We share an understanding here. Let’s try and work out how we can do it. After some negotiation, the manager decided that he would book out the sick bay, and make it the private quarters of the little family for the duration of the journey. Provided Orlando stayed out of sight in the sick bay, the parents could have him with them and have some privacy.
The parents agreed, and it went well. Orlando had the full tangi (funeral) he needed, at his home, and his parents were nurtured by their closest whanau.
When they returned, Orlando’s mother came to see me. She talked about how well it had all gone, and what it was to have her son die so unexpectedly. I have dismantled my personality, she told me. Taking Orlando home had been an experience of Shamanic intensity. It wasn’t a bad thing, in her eyes. Since Orlando’s death she had become more calm, more able to see the big picture, more mature. Grief dismantled her and made her new.
I was privileged to work with Orlando and his family. Privilege is an overworked word but it is true here. You only feel loss if you are able to feel love. The grief over loss like this is love’s release; it is the hardest thing to do after our own dying itself, the sharp end of love. It happens to us all, perhaps less suddenly than with the death of a baby. This young woman stood up afterwards with dignity and authenticity, and thinking about her moves me to this day.
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