Benjamin and Jackie

Benjamin and Jackie (and Tom and Suzanne)

Grief (from June, 2009)

Grief (from June, 2009)

Benjamin our bunny, our first bunny and a true friend, died on June 24^th.  He was nine years old and a widower, having lost Jackie-O in February of last year.  Suzanne and I had had Benjamin for 7 years and grieve his loss.  Lillia is three years old, and I think young enough to be spared deep feelings of his loss, though she did like Benjamin, as he was soft and furry, and didn’t show any inclination to bite or scratch, or even move quickly.  She referred to him as “my bunny.”  The evening that he died, when Suzanne and I sat down with Lillia, we told her that Benjamin had been a good bunny that had a long and happy life, but he was old and had gotten sick and had died. We told her that he had been our friend. We had loved him and would miss him, but now he was gone. 

I asked Lillia if she had any questions.  She looked at me and said “So bunny not going to get better?”

“No, sweetheart, he is not going to get better.”

“Okay,” she paused.  “Poor bunny,” very simply and matter-of-fact.

“Yes.  Poor bunny.”

“When he coming back?”

“He’s not coming back, sweetie.  He’s gone.”

“Poor bunny.”

We then distracted her with cartoons, and she was fine.  She has not spoken of him since.

It breaks no new ground to state that part of the work of grief is the recognition and acceptance of the loss of those we have loved.  The deeper the connection, the greater the trauma, and the greater the suffering. Now forgive me for seeming maudlin over the death of a rabbit, but the process is the same whether the loss is of pet, friend, or family.  It is the thickness of the cables that bind us to one another that determines the pain we feel when those cables are cut.

Lillia did not have the opportunity to develop a deep connection to Benjamin.  She is still unsure about the whole pet thing and is disinclined to be with most animals.  And her mind is, of course, still organizing and her intellect and memories formative.  How many of us remember the minor traumas that caused us to cry as toddlers on an almost daily basis?

Different mind, different memories, lighter cables,  She is spared somewhat.

If memory brings suffering, then healing is in part a process of forgetting, for when we forget painful events, or no longer see them as painful, we cease to suffer from their memory.

Enough of this.  Here are some pictures of Benjamin, who Suzanne and I referred to as the King of Bunnies, occasionally adapting “the King of Glory” from Handel’s Messiah to serenade him as we moved him to and from his hutch.  Yes he had a big, curmudgeonly head, but that was his nature.

A Rocky Start

So, Lillia and I are now in Taiwan, visiting our friend Yen-Wen and her kids at her parents' house.

It was a long and tiring trip here. First a short hop from Denver to LA. Then we went to the international terminal and found the EVA Airlines counter to get our boarding passes for the flight to Taipei. The ticket agent looked at Lillia's passport and said that because it would expire in less than six months, she would need a visa to enter Taiwan. In response to my expression of sheer panic, she said that we could "probably" get her a visa on arrival, for about $150- 200. Yes, U.S. dollars.

So this was weighing on my mind as we boarded our flight. But we were both very pleased with our Elite seats. There was lots of legroom, individual TV screens, good food, and extremely nice flight attendants (all very attractive young women). Unfortunately, the seat dividers could not be raised because they housed the consoles for the TV screens. I had assumed that Lillia could sleep with her head on my lap, but clearly that wasn't going to work. There were even four empty seats in a row across the aisle from us which would have made a dandy bed for me, had it been possible to raise the arms. Still, we both managed to get a fair amount of sleep in our reclining seats. We were both utterly exhausted and the frequent mild turbulence rocked us to sleep.

So on arrival at the airport (at ten o'clock at night), we went straight to the visa office. I filled out forms, got Lillia's picture taken, went and changed money, went back to the visa office, forked over NTD (New Taiwan Dollars) 5000 ($178.57), and got her passport back with the new visa pasted in. Since we appeared to be the only non-Taiwanese on our flight, there was no wait at immigration. Still, I was concerned that Yen-Wen would be wondering where the hell we were. After retrieving our checked luggage and exiting to the arrival hall, I was so relieved to find her there.

On the way to Zhong Li, Yen-Wen explained that the house was still in the midst of construction (they were putting a large addition on the house), so it was a bit dusty and chaotic. She had told me earlier that our room would be small but air-conditioned. So imagine my surprise when we were shown into a room about twice the size of my own bedroom, with its own brand-new bathroom! The double bed that we're sharing has the World's Hardest Mattress, but the air-con worked like a charm, and we were soon fast asleep.

Service, Honor, Family

Dr. Joseph Palin, Suzanne's dad (and Joe's, and Betsy's, and Janet's) back row on left, while at the Mayo Clinic receiving training during WWII. He went on to serve in North Africa and on the hospital ship Wisteria, making numerous crossings of the North Atlantic during the war. Thanks, Joe, for the image.

Sabers Continue to Rattle...

The news from North Korea has been scary, as usual, so I decided to pick up a copy of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, after reading an op-ed piece by the author, B.R. Myers in the NYT. Fascinating read about a country much more fascist than Stalinist or Confucian, and quite Orwellian in its habits. Salient characteristics include a strong personality cult, and a belief in racial superiority and purity adopted almost whole-cloth from the Japanese colonizers between 1905 and 1945, to be reconstructed after WWII, replacing Mount Paektu for Fujisan, and Kim Il Sung for Hirohito. History books and photographs are still continually being rewritten and "photoshopped" to meet modern needs. Oh, and of course America is a decadent, depraved, and mongrel country holding South Korea in its thrall--with only the heroic efforts of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader having protected at least half of the Korean people from the Yankee threat to the South. This is how the DPRK regime justifies its hold on power to its people, so don't count on an end to their saber rattling anytime soon. Unfortunately it seems that a lot of South Korea doesn't think much better of us here in America--though they don't seem too anxious for our troops to leave the Korean peninsula. Being "united" under Pyongyang would definitely have disadvantages. Oh well. At least the DPRK is no longer able to maintain a stranglehold on all information coming into the country. Maybe knowledge can eventually bring change without war.