Goodbye is the ultimate ending. When two good friends say bye to each other after school does that mean that they will never see one another again or let alone ever talk via e-mail or the phone or how about even in a letter? Of course not, they will probley see each other later in the day or week to go off to some party together looking to pick up women and have a good time. What if by some reason that these two gentalmen never did have the chance to see one another or talk to each other again. Was that goodbye final?
In, “There Is No Word For Goodbye,” by Mary Tallmountian, lines one through four, she describes about Sokoya looking through the net of wrinkles into the wise black pools of the her aunt’s eyes. To notice a feature so distinctive as that one would never forget those eyes. Tallmountian is saying that even if Sokoya and her aunt never see each other again that Sokoya will always rember her by those eyes. That image of the eyes will always be with Sokoya, therefore, never truly being away from her aunt.
The two young men from earlier have met back up and are now leaving the party which they have been drinking at and are in no shape to drive, but unfortunatly, they still do. On the way home the driver runs a stop sign and hits another car killing his friend with him in the truck, but the friend driving, walks away. At the funeral he neals down before the casket and tells his friend goodbye once again. Is goodbye now the ultimate end because death is involved? Tallmountain says no that it is not the end.
“We always think you’re coming back, but if you don’t, we’ll see you someplace else” (Tallmountian, 24-26). Here Sokoya’s aunt tells Sokoya that even in death we will see you in that someplace else. That someplace else could mean heaven or hell or what ever the Athabaskan people believe in for what comes after death. So, Tallmountian speaks of death as not the ultimate ending for a person, but as just another step in a longer journey.
Tallmountian raises a very intresting question, when does your mouth say goodbye to your heart? Tallmountian tells that we never truly say goodbye not when two people are seperated for a length of time or even in death. She says that we are always together no matter what because people never leave our hearts. Maybe we should incorporate what the Athabaskan people say instead of goodbye. They say, “tlaa” which roughly means see you. What a great way to think. What else do we say to each other without even thinking about what those words mean?
Works Cited
Tallmountian, Mary. “There Is No Word For Goodbye.” Literature and _ Ourseleves. 3rd ed. Ed. Gloria Herderson, Bill Day, and Sandra Waller, New York: Longman, 2001. 177-79.
