Chapter 8: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh
In the morning, Pooh feels ready for a little time alone. There’s been too much ‘You promised, Bear’ and ‘Perhaps you have a problem, dear.’
The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Chapter Eight
In the morning, Pooh feels ready for a little time alone. There’s been too much ‘You promised, Bear’ and ‘Perhaps you have a problem, dear.’
‘I’m an innocent bear,’ says Pooh to himself. ‘And terribly full of honey.’
The thought does little to comfort Pooh, stuck as he is in the mouth of Christopher Robin’s grave. Rabbit and Kanga would know he’s innocent, if they saw the rooster, but they didn’t.
And that makes him think another bothersome thought. If they didn’t see the rooster, was there any rooster at all?
Pooh shakes his head. Of course, there was a rooster. This isn’t like hunting woozles where all they saw were footprints. He saw the rooster. He talked to the rooster. The rooster was real.
‘Thoughts like these,’ says Pooh to himself, ‘they all come from being stuck in a hole too long,”
Pooh waits. And though he thought himself glad to be done with Rabbit and Kanga’s visit, he’s lonely. He waits for what seems a very long time, and as he waits, a thought waits with him, just out of sight. Even worse, other thoughts wait, too, and the longer he waits, the more they walk up to say ‘Hallo.’
In that thought, and the memory it contains, Pooh promises to never forget and to remember always.
Now, Pooh feels the sandy wall outside the cave and feels the cool air of the cave on his feet, and he thinks of Christopher Robin on the shelf. In some ways, they’re not so far apart as Pooh had feared. In others, they’re farther apart than Pooh could have ever imagined.
The lonely minutes drag on, and more memories introduce themselves, Christopher Robin pecked and clawed until his once-neat shirt and britches are red with fluff, and Pooh again feels the call of Owl’s sad song. It tugs on his heart from some place deep in the earth where all bears go to hide in the end, the eternal hibernation of the once-loved and now-forgotten.
Winnie-the-Pooh was once loved, and now alone, he feels forgotten, perhaps worse than forgotten, because if friends forget, then when they remember, that memory is joy and comfort arising from an overlooked and much-needed place. Not all memories are joy, and Pooh wonders if instead of being forgotten, he’s become something his friends would rather forget and, in forgetfulness, find the joy his memory restrains.
The quiet earth hums Owl’s song, and Pooh’s troubled heart hums with it.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Christopher Robin
Was my very best friend,
But what should I be
With Christopher’s end?
What’s that to us?
See to it yourself.
Your Robin is dead,
Laid out on a shelf.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Once, they were dancing, and the ground beneath them danced too. Towering over them all was Christopher Robin, lively and quick. His mother said it’s bedtime, but he said he never sleeps. Yes, he said, he never sleeps, and Pooh never sleeps because he’s made of fluff, and Christopher Robin wanted to be made of fluff, because Pooh, he said, will never die.
And Christopher Robin would never die. He said he’d never die.
Christopher Robin’s mother came into the room and set Pooh on the shelf, and she sat and patted the bed for Christopher Robin to join her.
Christopher Robin stamped his foot and said he wanted to dance. He bowed to the fiddlers and danced in the room and in the Wood, and he was a great favorite. He never slept, Christopher Robin. He danced and danced and said he would never die.
“I miss her, too,” said his mother.
The music must have stopped because Christopher Robin stopped too. “In the Hundred Acre Wood, nothing ever dies, not really,” he said.
“I know,” said his mother.
“Every day I go back, and Pooh is waiting for me.”
“I know,” said his mother.
“But she isn’t waiting for me, is she, not anymore?”
“No, she’s not,” said his mother. “She’s not coming back, and the day will come when you won’t go back to the Hundred Acre Wood, either.”
“I won’t?”
“You’ll move on to other things, worlds that aren’t even real for you when you’re only six.”
“Whole worlds?” asked Christopher Robin.
“And she’s moved on to other things,” his mother said. “We all move on, eventually.”
“Even fluff-stuffed bears?”
“Even fluff-stuffed bears.”
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
“She was asleep, but when she woke up, she smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I want her to wake up again. I want her to smile and squeeze my hand.”
“Not all endings are the same,” said his mother. “Sometimes we leave all at once, and sometimes it’s piece-by-piece.”
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
“I don’t want other worlds,” said Christopher Robin. “I’m not ready.”
“All of life is counting backwards from ten,” said his mother. “Then, ready or not, there you go.”
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Hum-Hum.
Winnie-the-Pooh sat on the shelf and watched Christopher Robin hug his mother. Now, Christopher Robin is on the shelf, and Pooh wonders if Christopher Robin is in want of a hug. He supposes it doesn’t matter. Pooh stands in the way, plugged in the hole like a cork in a bottle.
What must Christopher Robin’s mother think?
She’d think Pooh a very poor friend. She’d think ‘You promised, Bear’ and ‘Perhaps you have a problem, dear.’
He’d ask if this is the way mothers say goodbye to their sons, and she’d say it isn’t meant to be.
Pooh hangs down his head from his place in the hole and whispers his sorrows to the boy who loved him with all his heart.
Oh, this chapter! Right in the feels.