A whale washed ashore. Beautiful funeral, heartbreaking last journey at the New Brighton beach, New Zealand.
Close to You photography, Mea Baráth
“For people, life is a long line that they think has a precise beginning and a fairly clear end. But existence is the continuity and interweaving of life and death, a great cycle, and this cycle never ends. Life and death – after all, the two are essentially the same, and time is completely irrelevant.”
(Belinda Bauer)
It was in our first month in New Zealand. We moved from Hungary, everything was new and unknown, we were searching for our ways here. We were excited foreigners. We struggeled with homesickness, missed our friends, and beside being very hopeful, sometimes we were really afraid of our decision would turn out to be crazy.
We stood on the ground of the other side of the Earth exactly one month ago on that day. It was an amazing, heartbreaking experience.
A whale washed ashore.
Project Jonah, a nonprofit organisation unfortunately couldn’t save him, he died in the morning. He was buried by rolling to the sand grave. The movement lasted a day. Only members of the local iwi, the Maori tribe, were allowed to approach him, and they accompanied him with songs and blessings. The whale was 15 meters long and weighed 40 tons.
Local iwi Te Ngāi Tūāhuriri Rūnanga have given the whale the beautiful name ‘Te Koha au te ata Hapara’, which means ‘Gift from the Morning Light’. He laid to rest with mana.
