In later years, I would come to think of that day, actually that very moment, as a spawning of alternate universes. In one, the moment passed without notice, and I carried on, doing what I always did to get through each day, a countless progression of sameness, a mundane repetition of each day’s tasks, a fulfillment of meaningless expectations. I feel for that woman, and pray to whatever gods there are, if indeed there are any, that she may find her way back to that space in the dusty cobwebby attic, to that particular coffin of faded anonymous documents, and to that particular moment in time when an obscure piece of brittle paper fell out of the envelope she was holding, unnoticed, and fluttered to the ancient floorboards like a white butterfly finding its final resting place.
Time stood still; dust motes hung motionless, lit by a hundred shafts of frozen cold sunlight that pierced through the gaps in the tiles. The heart of the universe stopped beating and the butterfly silently held its breath, waiting for the next moment, where the laws of physics would resume, and one women‘s life is graced by the blessings of a butterfly‘s wings, and the other is not.
The heartbeat resumed, the world began to turn, the dust motes took up the music and dance, and the butterfly sighed its last breath.
I found the paper laying there. I could have missed it in that cold attic, anxious to return to the warmth and get on with my day. But my eyes were clear, and my mind was sharp. I picked it up and read:
I hereby certify that Aurelia (Montoya) Chavez is listed on the San Juan Pueblo Census Roll, dated October 1, 1982 an official record of this office, as being of Tewa Indian blood with census roll no. 458 date of birth 05/15/04.
Signed Governor, Pueblo of San Juan, (unintelligible signature) Date June 29, 1990.
I vaguely remembered getting this. It had been sent to me when Aurelia had died, some 14 years ago, by the woman who had been looking after her. It didn't come with an explanation and I don't know why she sent it. At the time, I wasn't much interested in these things, still in the first flush of life and thinking that fulfillment was just around the corner in a someday where I would find my true nature in achievements and accumulated ownership. Who cared about things like heritage when there was a career to pursue, important acquaintances to impress, future doctors and lawyers to raise? I had more important things to do with my life. The document went into a box and into the attic.
They say suffering is our best spiritual teacher, and I have had many teachers along the way. I wanted to find myself in the future and never seemed to get there. Three marriages later and as many careers, having lost hope in the future, I was ready to look into the past. I decided to find out about my grandmother’s people.
I went to San Juan Pueblo, the north of New Mexico -- a land of buttes, mesas, volcanic structures, fertile river valleys and badlands. It is now known as Okay Owingeh, the original Tewa name, meaning ‘place of the strong people‘. I had written several letters beforehand, learned there was a woman, Ester Montoya, who was the niece of a niece, and therefore a distant cousin of mine.
She invited me to her home, which smelled of freshly made corn tortillas and sage smoke. There were hand crocheted doilies spread over the arms and backs of every chair as well as on the end tables and coffee table. She had chickens out front, three dogs out back, and at least half a dozen cats indoors.
Her hair was grey, kept it in the traditional way, with long braids trailing down her back. She was plump, dressed in a smock and skirt and sandals. Her eyes were dark, much like mine, much like my father’s. She greeted me warmly with a hug, as if we had know each other all our lives, long lost cousins that we were.
Except for her animal friends she lived alone. Her husband had passed away and her children left the pueblo for city life a long time ago. I stayed with her a day and a night in that cozy little place. Mostly, we sat amid the doilies and the cats, drinking fresh brewed coffee, talking about the family, about why some stayed and why some left, and what it was like for an Indian child to come of age in the 50s and the 60s, in America, the land of the free, where all men are created equal and all are treated with equanimity, regardless of race, gender or creed.
The story that Ester told me reached into my very soul. It revealed much about my own childhood, why things were they way they were, why my parents behaved the way they did. She said when she was little she had been sent away to live in schools designated by the government for ‘training the Indians’. She said that they wanted to Christianize her and set her on the right path.
‘When I got there,’ she told me. ‘There were children from all the tribes. There were Hopi, Navaho, Cherokee, Lakota, Cree. It was interesting to meet all these other children, but I was afraid because I only knew my native tongue and I couldn‘t find anyone to tell me why I was there or what I was supposed to do.
‘They taught me to speak English, and I learned that the teachers called us dumb, stupid savages. They wouldn’t let me speak my native tongue or practice my native ways. I kept running away because they were so mean to me, and I wanted to be back with my mother and my father. But they always found me, and brought me back to the school and beat me. I didn’t understand why my mother and father had abandoned me and left me in that place. I tried to pray, but had forgotten how to pray in the old way, and the Spirits’s don’t understand English.’
I understood that Ester’s spirit had been broken. She cried when she told me her story, of the beatings, and the feeling of abandonment, as if it had happened to her only yesterday, instead of 50 years ago. How could this be? How could this happen in a world and time of prosperity, where religious freedom was sacrosanct?
Ester reminded me of my grandmother in the way she spoke, the accent, the hand gestures. But not the way she wore her hair or dressed. My grandmother dressed like a ‘white’ person. My grandmother would have been spared the cruelties of the Indian boarding schools, but she would not have been spared the shame placed on her by a misguided government, one that convinced her that her children should be taken from her if they were to have a better life.
Because of this, they never spoke to us of our heritage, and I didn‘t understand much of what went on in my family as a child. Maybe they believed that they were dumb stupid savages. What is particularly sad is that my father was made to feel this way. But I don't think it affected him the way it did Ester or my grandparents. He was a fighter, one of the strong ones. I can’t imagine him being ashamed of how he was. But in the end, this thing, this attitude about the Indian people, did him in. He could accept who he was, but he couldn't accept that the ‘white’ woman he had married, the woman he loved and the mother of his children, despised him for it.
This journey into my past, my family’s past, makes me want to weep for them, and for all of the people that the ‘civilized‘ white man attempted to brutally subjugate and assimilate. There is a little girl inside me like the little girl that Ester was. She’s still there, and she cries for the loss. How different things would have been if we had been taught to be proud of who we were, instead of ashamed.
I wonder about the people in my family who didn't teach us differently. I think they wanted to be white and tried to pretend that they were. I don’t blame them. It’s the American government that I blame. It was a betrayal.
Okay Owingeh is named ’place of the strong people’ because, despite the invading cultures that attempted to wipe out their way of life, these people have regained their heritage. They have learned to be proud of who they are, and that is as it should be. This must be why family loyalty means so much to me. The words ‘my people‘ are sacred, and I will never feel ashamed of who I am again.
Saturday 6 December 2008
Saturday 7 June 2008
The Final Gift
I
Agnes was a sharecropper’s daughter. Her family migrated to California in the back of a flatbed truck during the Dust Bowl exodus of the 1930s. Half-starved and only 9 years old, she worked alongside the rest of the family, gathering cotton in the fall, harvesting potatoes in the spring, and picking peaches in the summer. They moved around with the work, living in ditch bank camps along with half a million other migrant workers.
They were fortunate. Circumstances changed and they eventually found permanent work in Gilroy, California, Garlic Capitol of the World. We had a running joke in our family; that you didn’t need signs to find your way to Gilroy. All you had to do was roll the windows down.
Agnes married the son of the farmer where her family harvested garlic. She was 12 and he was 17. The way the story goes, her father had a shotgun that he was all to willing to make use of when it became obvious that the farmer’s son had been up to some hanky panky with his daughter. The farmer’s son found the prospect of marriage far more appealing than the shotgun, and that is how my mother came into this world.
They had seven more daughters, with one son who died in infancy. Lloyd, the farmer’s son, became an important man in the community. He inherited the farm, prospered, and eventually became Sherriff of Gilroy.
Lloyd seldom spoke. But when he did, it was never without a great deal of forethought. My mother told me this, with reverence, as if bequeathing a priceless gem of wisdom. I have keen memories of my grandfather’s house, of a large man with thick gray hair brushed straight back from a high forehead, a black moustache, and the smell of pipe tobacco. He wore lumberjack flannel and cowboy boots, and walked a steady pace in a house full of noisy daughters and grandchildren. Of the uncles I have no memory, except for an occasional shadow tucked away in a corner, out of depth amid the overpowering dynamics of my mother’s kin.
My mother also told me that Lloyd was a hard man to live with, with high standards and a heavy hand. It was whispered that he beat Agnes, which I chose not to believe because I worshiped him. But in my mother Lloyd met his match, something she was very proud of. Her stubborn Portuguese blood beat as hot as his, and she would not give in to his rule.
She ran away with a soldier on leave when she was 17. This unfortunate man never knew what hit him. Soft spoken, kind and gentle, he could not believe his good fortune; that a woman of such beauty would chose to be his bride. He was hopelessly in love, but no match for her fire. Their love was doomed.
And that is how I came into this world.
II
‘You better get over here.’ My sister answered the phone when I called to check on Mom. ‘The doctor was just here. He said …..’
She broke down then and could not speak, could not tell me more. I knew anyway. I was expecting this. I packed, got in the car, and started my last journey home.
There are several miles of unmaintained gravel and dirt road between the highway and Mom’s place. This road changes between visits. The gullies shift, and I had to constantly be on the lookout for stray boulders that would wash down from the mountain.
I usually greeted her with something like, ‘When are you going to get that road paved, Mom? Geez, I didn’t think I’d make it this time.’
And she would say something like, ‘Well, if an old crone like me can drive that road without all the moaning and the groaning, then by Gawd, so can you. And here’s your coffee. Be sure you drink it this time.’ It was a ritual with us. I’d complain about the road and she’d put me in my place. It was how we said, ‘I love you’.
Mom made a hobby of getting six cents out of every nickel, something I did not appreciate during those long winter nights when I visited, shivering under layers of quilts while listening to the packs of coyotes howling and yipping outside in the snow. She would not use the central heating, no matter how cold it got. Instead, she fired up a huge wood burning stove in the great room before the rest of us would even think of getting out of bed. One of our chores was to chop and stack the firewood when we visited, a concession to her not quite five-foot, 86 pounds of meanness. It was hard to imagine that she would not be there at the door with my coffee, greeting me with a clever new insult, just to let me know she loved me.
And who would get the fire going? Mom was the only one who could work that stove.
She had created a sanctuary of her home, Dolly’s last stand, surrounded by high desert foothills at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. And that is where she chose to die. She had moved there 30 years ago with her husband Harlan. He built her a Spanish style hacienda at the top of a hill, with a red tiled roof and a covered porch in front, where they could sit in the shade and look out over the Mojave Desert. They set up housekeeping in a tent while the house was built. They brought home a miniature Chihuahua and named her ‘Coco’. She became their baby. This was back in the days when they had plenty of energy and enthusiasm, a by-product of their love, and each small detail of their life was a thing of wonder and bounty to them.
I didn’t visit much in those days, and neither did my sisters. Dolly and Harlan were content with their own company, and if any of us had the inclination to give it much thought, we would have said that we were all quite happy with the long distance relationships. It was a phase in our lives when events had caused each of us to go our own way for a time, as sometimes happens in a family. This would change as the years went by, as each of us cycled through spouses, careers, and personal tragedies.
In the mean time, Harlan and Dolly enjoyed their solitude, taking Coco for walks along the dry river beds that ran between the canyons, through the sage, yucca and Joshua trees that grew there. This was before the surrounding land had been developed, and the coyotes still ran wild in the foothills each night.
The years went by, and the family went through another phase and longed for home. My sisters and I brought our children and husbands to Mom’s for the holidays, the only time in the year when we could have all our favourite foods in one helping. Mom had her tricks to liven up the meals; an additional ham with a pineapple glaze to accompany the Christmas turkey, a can of mushroom soup in the gravy; chopped oysters in the stuffing; and a special dish made with canned yams and fruit cocktail, with heaps of brown sugar and butter on top, baked until the sugar melted and formed a crust. By request, she always made a pot of Portuguese beans and another of her special rice pudding to have with the leftovers in the days that followed. I would bring the pumpkin pies, Maria would bring the apple pies, and Patty always brought a huge tub of hot potato salad made with bacon.
These meals were followed by long walks in the desert, with our husbands and our children, and a small herd of Chihuahuas, Coco’s descendents. Once, we came across a baby rattlesnake. It was a warm Thanksgiving that year, at the end of an unusually late Indian summer, and the snake had wandered onto the trail, probably confused at the unseasonable warmth. Harlan and I threw stones at it, thinking it a threat to the dogs and the children. But we kept missing, with a glancing blow now and then, while the children stared in morbid fascination and the Chihuahuas screamed with excitement. The poor thing slithered off, slightly bruised. We felt foolish, and Mom shook her head in disgust.
I visited Mom on my own, once, longing for solitude in the desert hills. On that visit, I found the ruins of a small cabin hidden behind a red sandstone outcropping. All that was left was a square of foundation stone and a fireplace. I sat on one of the walls, wondering about the people who had lived there. I closed my eyes and focused on a woman surrounded by a bevy of children. At some point, I merged with the woman, becoming a participant in a romantic story, of days of pregnancies, and birthing, and raising a hardy brood, and of long winter nights in the loft with a husband who loved me dearly. My thoughts were sweet and pure, and my life was wholesome and simple as I dwelled for a time in that place.
I was forced back into the world by thoughts of my failed marriage, and for some reason, thoughts of Dad. He too had left, in his own way, after years of sorrow and disillusionment. I wondered how that was for Mom, how different her story of lost love was from mine. I knew what it was like to lose a husband to infidelity. But my father had left when his personal daemons overcame his will to live. How does one cope with that? Did she, like I, consider herself betrayed? At least I knew who the enemy was.
There are no romantic stories, I thought. It’s all an illusion, just like my fantasy about this cabin. It was probably a miserable life for them. The husband most likely came home tired, dirty, and in pain from his long days of hard work. He would be grouchy, hungry and demanding, because that’s just the way life is, at the end of the day. It’s the suffering and hardship that most people focus on, and it’s the people that are the closest to them that they generally take it out on.
That was a very bad time for me. I loved my husband, and foolishly wanted him back. Instead, I had this bleakness of the soul that crawled into bed with me each night and made me sleep with him.
That was the year that Coco died. Mom told me that Harlan wept like a baby. It was hard to imagine this because Harlan was such a big strong man who had always been emotionally solid. It took a lot out of him, and seemed to really slow him down. He retired, and a year later, on the first day of spring, his heart gave up.
According to Mom, Harlan was not supposed to die first, and she was angry with him because of it. Mom was going through another round of chemotherapy at the time, and she kept telling us how worried she was about him.
‘He couldn’t piss in a bucket if I didn’t show him where to point it,’ she would tell us. ‘What would he do without me?’ She made us promise to look after him. I thought of him sitting in his big easy chair, watching TV with his remote control, and calling to Mom to bring him a dish of ice cream. She would bring it to him, mumbling, ‘Why doesn’t he get off his lazy butt and get it himself,’ and ‘Gawd knows he needs the exercise,’ and ‘I hope you choke on it,’ when she handed it to him. I knew they both loved these little moments, and would not have it any other way.
But on that morning, she had left him at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee, saying that she was going back to bed to read her book. When she came back an hour later, he was gone.
With his death, she felt that there was no point in fighting the inevitable. She decided to let the cancer have its way. And once Mom makes up her mind about something, it will not be changed.
The road up to her house had been levelled since the last time I was there. One of the neighbours had done it, an act of kindness following Harlan’s death. All the gullies had been filled in with gravel and there were no boulders. I had nothing to complain about when I arrived.
My youngest sister opened the door. I could tell she had been crying, but she smiled and gave me a hug.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘Sleeping,’ she told me. ‘Go in and see her. She’s been asking for you.’
Mom looked so small and childlike, surrounded by quilts and Chihuahuas. She woke when several of them growled at me, tiny rumbling tremors under the quilts.
‘Hush!’ she yelled at them, surprisingly feisty. ‘Well, I see you made it. You didn’t get lost this time?’
‘No, Mom,’ I laughed and sat next to her on the bed.
You could not be sad around Mom. She would tell you to leave and get a handle on it. It just was not allowed. But there was something I wanted to ask, a mystery that had troubled me for a very long time, something we had not once, in our entire lives together, discussed.
‘Did you and Dad love each other?’
A little girl had snuck into the room. I had seen her before, hiding in the shadows. She looked a bit like me, with my father’s slim build and my mother’s dark eyes. When I asked that question that was so important to me, she started crying, uncontrollably, which took me by surprise. Mom put her arms around her, and told her of course they loved each other. She told her what it was like for them when I was born, things I did not know, how they lived in a converted chicken coop, just a single room with a bed, and an outhouse that they shared with the landlady. She said none of this mattered, that it was heaven for them, especially because of their beautiful new baby girl, their first born daughter. On and on she talked, on into the night, telling me about the days when I was a baby and they were so much in love.
In time, the little girl stopped crying. She wiped her nose and her eyes and left the two women to themselves. I have not seen much of that little girl since then, although she does let me know that she is still with me.
Mom died in her sleep the next day, in her own bed, in her home in the high desert, surrounded by her dogs and her three daughters, those she loved the most.
It’s all gone now, Mom, her cooking, the warm fire in the wood burning stove, Harlan, my Dad, Lloyd, Agnes. Even the coyotes have left. There is no reason to go back. I keep my memories with me, though. They make me smile, and sometimes they make me sad, but they always give me hope and courage. They are special, those memories, meant to be cherished, and the most special of all is the gift she gave me at the end; that she loved my father and he loved her.
Agnes was a sharecropper’s daughter. Her family migrated to California in the back of a flatbed truck during the Dust Bowl exodus of the 1930s. Half-starved and only 9 years old, she worked alongside the rest of the family, gathering cotton in the fall, harvesting potatoes in the spring, and picking peaches in the summer. They moved around with the work, living in ditch bank camps along with half a million other migrant workers.
They were fortunate. Circumstances changed and they eventually found permanent work in Gilroy, California, Garlic Capitol of the World. We had a running joke in our family; that you didn’t need signs to find your way to Gilroy. All you had to do was roll the windows down.
Agnes married the son of the farmer where her family harvested garlic. She was 12 and he was 17. The way the story goes, her father had a shotgun that he was all to willing to make use of when it became obvious that the farmer’s son had been up to some hanky panky with his daughter. The farmer’s son found the prospect of marriage far more appealing than the shotgun, and that is how my mother came into this world.
They had seven more daughters, with one son who died in infancy. Lloyd, the farmer’s son, became an important man in the community. He inherited the farm, prospered, and eventually became Sherriff of Gilroy.
Lloyd seldom spoke. But when he did, it was never without a great deal of forethought. My mother told me this, with reverence, as if bequeathing a priceless gem of wisdom. I have keen memories of my grandfather’s house, of a large man with thick gray hair brushed straight back from a high forehead, a black moustache, and the smell of pipe tobacco. He wore lumberjack flannel and cowboy boots, and walked a steady pace in a house full of noisy daughters and grandchildren. Of the uncles I have no memory, except for an occasional shadow tucked away in a corner, out of depth amid the overpowering dynamics of my mother’s kin.
My mother also told me that Lloyd was a hard man to live with, with high standards and a heavy hand. It was whispered that he beat Agnes, which I chose not to believe because I worshiped him. But in my mother Lloyd met his match, something she was very proud of. Her stubborn Portuguese blood beat as hot as his, and she would not give in to his rule.
She ran away with a soldier on leave when she was 17. This unfortunate man never knew what hit him. Soft spoken, kind and gentle, he could not believe his good fortune; that a woman of such beauty would chose to be his bride. He was hopelessly in love, but no match for her fire. Their love was doomed.
And that is how I came into this world.
II
‘You better get over here.’ My sister answered the phone when I called to check on Mom. ‘The doctor was just here. He said …..’
She broke down then and could not speak, could not tell me more. I knew anyway. I was expecting this. I packed, got in the car, and started my last journey home.
There are several miles of unmaintained gravel and dirt road between the highway and Mom’s place. This road changes between visits. The gullies shift, and I had to constantly be on the lookout for stray boulders that would wash down from the mountain.
I usually greeted her with something like, ‘When are you going to get that road paved, Mom? Geez, I didn’t think I’d make it this time.’
And she would say something like, ‘Well, if an old crone like me can drive that road without all the moaning and the groaning, then by Gawd, so can you. And here’s your coffee. Be sure you drink it this time.’ It was a ritual with us. I’d complain about the road and she’d put me in my place. It was how we said, ‘I love you’.
Mom made a hobby of getting six cents out of every nickel, something I did not appreciate during those long winter nights when I visited, shivering under layers of quilts while listening to the packs of coyotes howling and yipping outside in the snow. She would not use the central heating, no matter how cold it got. Instead, she fired up a huge wood burning stove in the great room before the rest of us would even think of getting out of bed. One of our chores was to chop and stack the firewood when we visited, a concession to her not quite five-foot, 86 pounds of meanness. It was hard to imagine that she would not be there at the door with my coffee, greeting me with a clever new insult, just to let me know she loved me.
And who would get the fire going? Mom was the only one who could work that stove.
She had created a sanctuary of her home, Dolly’s last stand, surrounded by high desert foothills at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. And that is where she chose to die. She had moved there 30 years ago with her husband Harlan. He built her a Spanish style hacienda at the top of a hill, with a red tiled roof and a covered porch in front, where they could sit in the shade and look out over the Mojave Desert. They set up housekeeping in a tent while the house was built. They brought home a miniature Chihuahua and named her ‘Coco’. She became their baby. This was back in the days when they had plenty of energy and enthusiasm, a by-product of their love, and each small detail of their life was a thing of wonder and bounty to them.
I didn’t visit much in those days, and neither did my sisters. Dolly and Harlan were content with their own company, and if any of us had the inclination to give it much thought, we would have said that we were all quite happy with the long distance relationships. It was a phase in our lives when events had caused each of us to go our own way for a time, as sometimes happens in a family. This would change as the years went by, as each of us cycled through spouses, careers, and personal tragedies.
In the mean time, Harlan and Dolly enjoyed their solitude, taking Coco for walks along the dry river beds that ran between the canyons, through the sage, yucca and Joshua trees that grew there. This was before the surrounding land had been developed, and the coyotes still ran wild in the foothills each night.
The years went by, and the family went through another phase and longed for home. My sisters and I brought our children and husbands to Mom’s for the holidays, the only time in the year when we could have all our favourite foods in one helping. Mom had her tricks to liven up the meals; an additional ham with a pineapple glaze to accompany the Christmas turkey, a can of mushroom soup in the gravy; chopped oysters in the stuffing; and a special dish made with canned yams and fruit cocktail, with heaps of brown sugar and butter on top, baked until the sugar melted and formed a crust. By request, she always made a pot of Portuguese beans and another of her special rice pudding to have with the leftovers in the days that followed. I would bring the pumpkin pies, Maria would bring the apple pies, and Patty always brought a huge tub of hot potato salad made with bacon.
These meals were followed by long walks in the desert, with our husbands and our children, and a small herd of Chihuahuas, Coco’s descendents. Once, we came across a baby rattlesnake. It was a warm Thanksgiving that year, at the end of an unusually late Indian summer, and the snake had wandered onto the trail, probably confused at the unseasonable warmth. Harlan and I threw stones at it, thinking it a threat to the dogs and the children. But we kept missing, with a glancing blow now and then, while the children stared in morbid fascination and the Chihuahuas screamed with excitement. The poor thing slithered off, slightly bruised. We felt foolish, and Mom shook her head in disgust.
I visited Mom on my own, once, longing for solitude in the desert hills. On that visit, I found the ruins of a small cabin hidden behind a red sandstone outcropping. All that was left was a square of foundation stone and a fireplace. I sat on one of the walls, wondering about the people who had lived there. I closed my eyes and focused on a woman surrounded by a bevy of children. At some point, I merged with the woman, becoming a participant in a romantic story, of days of pregnancies, and birthing, and raising a hardy brood, and of long winter nights in the loft with a husband who loved me dearly. My thoughts were sweet and pure, and my life was wholesome and simple as I dwelled for a time in that place.
I was forced back into the world by thoughts of my failed marriage, and for some reason, thoughts of Dad. He too had left, in his own way, after years of sorrow and disillusionment. I wondered how that was for Mom, how different her story of lost love was from mine. I knew what it was like to lose a husband to infidelity. But my father had left when his personal daemons overcame his will to live. How does one cope with that? Did she, like I, consider herself betrayed? At least I knew who the enemy was.
There are no romantic stories, I thought. It’s all an illusion, just like my fantasy about this cabin. It was probably a miserable life for them. The husband most likely came home tired, dirty, and in pain from his long days of hard work. He would be grouchy, hungry and demanding, because that’s just the way life is, at the end of the day. It’s the suffering and hardship that most people focus on, and it’s the people that are the closest to them that they generally take it out on.
That was a very bad time for me. I loved my husband, and foolishly wanted him back. Instead, I had this bleakness of the soul that crawled into bed with me each night and made me sleep with him.
That was the year that Coco died. Mom told me that Harlan wept like a baby. It was hard to imagine this because Harlan was such a big strong man who had always been emotionally solid. It took a lot out of him, and seemed to really slow him down. He retired, and a year later, on the first day of spring, his heart gave up.
According to Mom, Harlan was not supposed to die first, and she was angry with him because of it. Mom was going through another round of chemotherapy at the time, and she kept telling us how worried she was about him.
‘He couldn’t piss in a bucket if I didn’t show him where to point it,’ she would tell us. ‘What would he do without me?’ She made us promise to look after him. I thought of him sitting in his big easy chair, watching TV with his remote control, and calling to Mom to bring him a dish of ice cream. She would bring it to him, mumbling, ‘Why doesn’t he get off his lazy butt and get it himself,’ and ‘Gawd knows he needs the exercise,’ and ‘I hope you choke on it,’ when she handed it to him. I knew they both loved these little moments, and would not have it any other way.
But on that morning, she had left him at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee, saying that she was going back to bed to read her book. When she came back an hour later, he was gone.
With his death, she felt that there was no point in fighting the inevitable. She decided to let the cancer have its way. And once Mom makes up her mind about something, it will not be changed.
The road up to her house had been levelled since the last time I was there. One of the neighbours had done it, an act of kindness following Harlan’s death. All the gullies had been filled in with gravel and there were no boulders. I had nothing to complain about when I arrived.
My youngest sister opened the door. I could tell she had been crying, but she smiled and gave me a hug.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘Sleeping,’ she told me. ‘Go in and see her. She’s been asking for you.’
Mom looked so small and childlike, surrounded by quilts and Chihuahuas. She woke when several of them growled at me, tiny rumbling tremors under the quilts.
‘Hush!’ she yelled at them, surprisingly feisty. ‘Well, I see you made it. You didn’t get lost this time?’
‘No, Mom,’ I laughed and sat next to her on the bed.
You could not be sad around Mom. She would tell you to leave and get a handle on it. It just was not allowed. But there was something I wanted to ask, a mystery that had troubled me for a very long time, something we had not once, in our entire lives together, discussed.
‘Did you and Dad love each other?’
A little girl had snuck into the room. I had seen her before, hiding in the shadows. She looked a bit like me, with my father’s slim build and my mother’s dark eyes. When I asked that question that was so important to me, she started crying, uncontrollably, which took me by surprise. Mom put her arms around her, and told her of course they loved each other. She told her what it was like for them when I was born, things I did not know, how they lived in a converted chicken coop, just a single room with a bed, and an outhouse that they shared with the landlady. She said none of this mattered, that it was heaven for them, especially because of their beautiful new baby girl, their first born daughter. On and on she talked, on into the night, telling me about the days when I was a baby and they were so much in love.
In time, the little girl stopped crying. She wiped her nose and her eyes and left the two women to themselves. I have not seen much of that little girl since then, although she does let me know that she is still with me.
Mom died in her sleep the next day, in her own bed, in her home in the high desert, surrounded by her dogs and her three daughters, those she loved the most.
It’s all gone now, Mom, her cooking, the warm fire in the wood burning stove, Harlan, my Dad, Lloyd, Agnes. Even the coyotes have left. There is no reason to go back. I keep my memories with me, though. They make me smile, and sometimes they make me sad, but they always give me hope and courage. They are special, those memories, meant to be cherished, and the most special of all is the gift she gave me at the end; that she loved my father and he loved her.
Tuesday 20 May 2008
What Came Before
Her life began on the day she became aware of herself as a person. She had discovered analytical thinking, although she didn't call it that. What four-year old would? But it pleased her to think, so she engaged in it most of the day, wondering about herself, her feelings, the people who shared her life, and what came before.
She had memories prior to this age, bursts of disjointed capriccios accompanying a series of short complicated dances, a flutter of tiny feet that went suddenly still, waiting for the music to begin again. She vaguely knew that time continued to pass during the silence of the music and constantly sought the lapse, hoping to figure it all out. She remembers having feelings in these memories, but she doesn’t remember having thoughts, like she had now.
She remembers being in the garden with her sister, cutting the grass with a pair of scissors. She held the grass while her sister cut. Only her sister cut her finger instead and made it bleed, and she ran into the house and cried. Her Uncle Freddie was there; a nice man. He had come over to visit that day and was sitting on the couch with her mother. He chuckled when she told them what had happened. And it hurt her feelings that he did this. Thinking about this memory, she knew it wasn’t a mean laugh, because her Uncle Freddie was a nice man. But she doesn’t remember much about her mother, only a vague disapproving shadow sitting on the couch.
She remembers eating dirt behind the house, and the memory of that dirt was so wonderful. It tasted better than anything she had ever eaten. But she knew she wasn’t supposed to eat the dirt, and one day her mother found her and beat her and she didn’t eat the dirt any more.
She remembers asking her mother for a drink of water. Her mother was doing the dishes at the time. But her mother had become cross, and impatient, and had handed her a glass of water with an angry, “Here!” Only the water had soap in it and she didn’t want to drink it. Her mother yelled at her and made her drink it anyway, and she got sick and threw up.
She remembers taking a bath in the porch sink where they did the laundry, and that the soap burned her skin. Because of this, she dreaded the bath. She wanted to cry and tell her mother, but she didn’t because she knew her mother would be cross again, and she didn’t want her mother to be cross.
She remembers her mother playing Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White on the record player in the front room, her mother’s favourite song, and dancing around the coffee table with her mother. She remembers the exquisite happiness of this moment, and how sad she was when her mother didn’t want to dance anymore.
She remembers when the Man and the Woman came to live with them. Later, she was to learn that the Man’s name was Jesus, like the baby Jesus, and she thought it was strange that they called him that because the baby Jesus was so pure and holy and she somehow knew that this man was a bad man. But she was to call him Jess, which some people did, and she was to call the woman gramma, because she was her mother’s mother. They lived in a room made for them in the garage. She has a memory, before she knew he was a bad man, back when they were still the Man and the Woman, before she learned their names, the Woman had gone into the house, and she had wandered into the garage and into the room, and the Man was sleeping. And she looked at the Man. And he woke up. But that’s all she has of that memory.
She had a memory that didn’t have any pictures with it, only feelings. The memory was illusive, vague, but strong, overpowering. It was a memory of happiness, of love, of feeling safe, and of how suddenly all those wonderful feelings went away. At four, she spent a lot of time by herself. And she would cry. But sometimes the tears were sweet and comforting. And being by herself, instead of playing with the other children, gave her all the time she needed to think about this memory, to try to figure it out. She decided that it must be the memory of when she was a baby, of the time when her mother held her and paid attention to her, the way other mothers do with their babies, and that when she wasn’t a baby anymore, her mother stopped holding her or paying attention to her. Later, when she was a young girl at Catholic school, she would believe that she held within her the memory of the Garden of Eden and that her terrible loneliness was God’s punishment to his children for having defied him.
Much later in life, when she was a grandmother, and on the path to healing, she would learn, from her mother, the truth of where that memory came from.
As a newborn, she was told, she had been sent to live with her father’s people, a Pueblo tribe in Northern New Mexico. But when she was a toddler, her mother had a change of heart and wanted her back.
'I had to send your father to bring you back,' her mother had told her, so casually, as if it was of no consequence, as if she were discussing last year’s rose bushes. They were having coffee at her mother’s house in the high desert, out on the back patio. They were huddled together in their night robes, two ladies, one very old, the other on the way, trying to keep warm in the early morning desert sun.
'They wouldn’t give you back,' her mother had explained. 'They wanted to keep you, so that’s why I had to send your father to go get you. And oh, you cried! You just would not stop crying. Oh, you made me so angry, sitting in the corner all the time crying for your Nana. Your Nana, your Nana! That’s all I ever heard was your Nana!'
This thing that she just said, this truth she just revealed, does she know? Does she in any way comprehend how it reached into my very essence and brutally grabbed forgotten memories, images of a little snot nosed girl, huddled in the corner, weeping for her Nana, alone, devastated. How can you sit there, so casual, as if you didn’t just tell me that it was you who had destroyed my soul? How could you have been so stupid? How could you have been so cruel? Oh, that poor little girl, that poor innocent devastated tiny little girl.
I said nothing of these thoughts. I kept them to myself. What was the point? Why beat up an old woman who, in her own perverted way, did the best she could?
‘Well, it’s cold out here,’ my mother said in time. ‘I think I’ll go back to bed and read my book. Are you coming in?’
‘No, Mom. I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer and enjoy the sun.’
I sipped my coffee, gazing out at the cold blue desert. I heard a piercing call, poignantly lonely in the still silence. I looked up and saw a white hawk circling overhead, tipping one wing and then the other as it made minute adjustments in its flight.
I’d heard a story from one of my mother’s neighbours a few days before, a Hopi woman who lived in a trailer on the other side of the wash. Her name was Mary. I had gotten to know Mary over the years during my visits to my mother's house. She was short and squat, with the high cheekbones and broad face of her people. She lived with Howard, a 60 year old child with blue myopic eyes that looked huge behind the think lenses had needed. Mary had adopted him as a young boy when he was abandoned by his parents. He was expert at making a pot of coffee, though not much else, and was always pleased to do the honours when I came to visit.
Mary had told me that a white hawk had recently been seen in the high desert foothills. She explained that the white hawk used to live here, many years ago, long before her time, but that it had left this place along with the grizzly bear and the Serrano Indians.
'This is a good thing,' she told me. 'A very good sign. It means that these mountains and this desert are healing and that balance is returning to this world.'
But that was all she would tell me, waving me off and claiming senility when I wanted to know more.
The hawk called again. Its call was smooth and full, nothing like the scream associated with other hawks, but instead a gentle soft whistle that found places in my soul. I was enthralled with this hawk and thinking of Mary's words. Something was floating around in my head, tendrils of a memory that I was struggling to grab on to.
A picture came to mind, of a central fire and the smell of wood smoke, of a feeling of delicious mystery as well as safety, of love and belonging, and the voice of my grandmother, my Nana, as I sat in her lap. She was giving me the story of the Stone Child, a little boy who was an orphan. He was so lonely that he had wrapped himself around a stone. She said that this was my story, a gift from her to me, and that I would remember the story when I needed it.
She told me that the child would not let go of the stone, not to eat, or to go into the tepee to sleep, or the play with the other children. Some of the people kept making fun of the child, and this had only made him cling all the more to the stone.
“What, are you going to marry that stone?” they taunted. “Are you going to make it your wife?”
The stone drained all the warmth from the child and made it sickly. My grandmother told me that if the child did not find the courage to let go of the stone, that it would never find its true mother, which is the mother that resides in the heart. This is the mother that we take with us when we leave our childhood home and go out into the world. Although the child did not have a real mother, it was important that he find his true mother, otherwise, he would never find his true self, and his spirit would wander, weeping and never finding a place to call home.
Sitting there, gazing up at the hawk, I went back to that horrible place that my mother had shown me as we sat there having our morning coffee, on her back patio, in the early morning desert sun. There was a terrible weeping there, and I didn’t want to get any closer because there was so much pain and grief and such bitter loneliness in it. But the hawk had sent me on this journey for a reason and I knew I had to search for what I was sent here to find.
I found the child, a little girl, wrapped around a huge cold stone. Gently, I pulled her arms from the stone, holding them firm although she struggled and fought.
‘No, no, no,’ she wailed. ‘Give me back my stone!’
‘There, there, there,’ I told her. ‘I am here. I am here. Don't cry.’
‘Nana?’
‘No, not Nana. But close enough.’
I embraced the little girl, held her to me. Her hair was a dark brown, like mine without the grey, and her eyes were the colour of my father's. I thought of a the promise that had been made to this little girl, a very long time ago, by someone who loved her more than life itself. The promise was sincere, but could not be kept, because life was like that sometimes. Could I fulfill that promise?
I looked into those eyes, identical to my own, and told her, from my heart, that we were together now, and that we would always be together, no matter what, and that she would never ever ever be alone again.
She had memories prior to this age, bursts of disjointed capriccios accompanying a series of short complicated dances, a flutter of tiny feet that went suddenly still, waiting for the music to begin again. She vaguely knew that time continued to pass during the silence of the music and constantly sought the lapse, hoping to figure it all out. She remembers having feelings in these memories, but she doesn’t remember having thoughts, like she had now.
She remembers being in the garden with her sister, cutting the grass with a pair of scissors. She held the grass while her sister cut. Only her sister cut her finger instead and made it bleed, and she ran into the house and cried. Her Uncle Freddie was there; a nice man. He had come over to visit that day and was sitting on the couch with her mother. He chuckled when she told them what had happened. And it hurt her feelings that he did this. Thinking about this memory, she knew it wasn’t a mean laugh, because her Uncle Freddie was a nice man. But she doesn’t remember much about her mother, only a vague disapproving shadow sitting on the couch.
She remembers eating dirt behind the house, and the memory of that dirt was so wonderful. It tasted better than anything she had ever eaten. But she knew she wasn’t supposed to eat the dirt, and one day her mother found her and beat her and she didn’t eat the dirt any more.
She remembers asking her mother for a drink of water. Her mother was doing the dishes at the time. But her mother had become cross, and impatient, and had handed her a glass of water with an angry, “Here!” Only the water had soap in it and she didn’t want to drink it. Her mother yelled at her and made her drink it anyway, and she got sick and threw up.
She remembers taking a bath in the porch sink where they did the laundry, and that the soap burned her skin. Because of this, she dreaded the bath. She wanted to cry and tell her mother, but she didn’t because she knew her mother would be cross again, and she didn’t want her mother to be cross.
She remembers her mother playing Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White on the record player in the front room, her mother’s favourite song, and dancing around the coffee table with her mother. She remembers the exquisite happiness of this moment, and how sad she was when her mother didn’t want to dance anymore.
She remembers when the Man and the Woman came to live with them. Later, she was to learn that the Man’s name was Jesus, like the baby Jesus, and she thought it was strange that they called him that because the baby Jesus was so pure and holy and she somehow knew that this man was a bad man. But she was to call him Jess, which some people did, and she was to call the woman gramma, because she was her mother’s mother. They lived in a room made for them in the garage. She has a memory, before she knew he was a bad man, back when they were still the Man and the Woman, before she learned their names, the Woman had gone into the house, and she had wandered into the garage and into the room, and the Man was sleeping. And she looked at the Man. And he woke up. But that’s all she has of that memory.
She had a memory that didn’t have any pictures with it, only feelings. The memory was illusive, vague, but strong, overpowering. It was a memory of happiness, of love, of feeling safe, and of how suddenly all those wonderful feelings went away. At four, she spent a lot of time by herself. And she would cry. But sometimes the tears were sweet and comforting. And being by herself, instead of playing with the other children, gave her all the time she needed to think about this memory, to try to figure it out. She decided that it must be the memory of when she was a baby, of the time when her mother held her and paid attention to her, the way other mothers do with their babies, and that when she wasn’t a baby anymore, her mother stopped holding her or paying attention to her. Later, when she was a young girl at Catholic school, she would believe that she held within her the memory of the Garden of Eden and that her terrible loneliness was God’s punishment to his children for having defied him.
Much later in life, when she was a grandmother, and on the path to healing, she would learn, from her mother, the truth of where that memory came from.
As a newborn, she was told, she had been sent to live with her father’s people, a Pueblo tribe in Northern New Mexico. But when she was a toddler, her mother had a change of heart and wanted her back.
'I had to send your father to bring you back,' her mother had told her, so casually, as if it was of no consequence, as if she were discussing last year’s rose bushes. They were having coffee at her mother’s house in the high desert, out on the back patio. They were huddled together in their night robes, two ladies, one very old, the other on the way, trying to keep warm in the early morning desert sun.
'They wouldn’t give you back,' her mother had explained. 'They wanted to keep you, so that’s why I had to send your father to go get you. And oh, you cried! You just would not stop crying. Oh, you made me so angry, sitting in the corner all the time crying for your Nana. Your Nana, your Nana! That’s all I ever heard was your Nana!'
This thing that she just said, this truth she just revealed, does she know? Does she in any way comprehend how it reached into my very essence and brutally grabbed forgotten memories, images of a little snot nosed girl, huddled in the corner, weeping for her Nana, alone, devastated. How can you sit there, so casual, as if you didn’t just tell me that it was you who had destroyed my soul? How could you have been so stupid? How could you have been so cruel? Oh, that poor little girl, that poor innocent devastated tiny little girl.
I said nothing of these thoughts. I kept them to myself. What was the point? Why beat up an old woman who, in her own perverted way, did the best she could?
‘Well, it’s cold out here,’ my mother said in time. ‘I think I’ll go back to bed and read my book. Are you coming in?’
‘No, Mom. I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer and enjoy the sun.’
I sipped my coffee, gazing out at the cold blue desert. I heard a piercing call, poignantly lonely in the still silence. I looked up and saw a white hawk circling overhead, tipping one wing and then the other as it made minute adjustments in its flight.
I’d heard a story from one of my mother’s neighbours a few days before, a Hopi woman who lived in a trailer on the other side of the wash. Her name was Mary. I had gotten to know Mary over the years during my visits to my mother's house. She was short and squat, with the high cheekbones and broad face of her people. She lived with Howard, a 60 year old child with blue myopic eyes that looked huge behind the think lenses had needed. Mary had adopted him as a young boy when he was abandoned by his parents. He was expert at making a pot of coffee, though not much else, and was always pleased to do the honours when I came to visit.
Mary had told me that a white hawk had recently been seen in the high desert foothills. She explained that the white hawk used to live here, many years ago, long before her time, but that it had left this place along with the grizzly bear and the Serrano Indians.
'This is a good thing,' she told me. 'A very good sign. It means that these mountains and this desert are healing and that balance is returning to this world.'
But that was all she would tell me, waving me off and claiming senility when I wanted to know more.
The hawk called again. Its call was smooth and full, nothing like the scream associated with other hawks, but instead a gentle soft whistle that found places in my soul. I was enthralled with this hawk and thinking of Mary's words. Something was floating around in my head, tendrils of a memory that I was struggling to grab on to.
A picture came to mind, of a central fire and the smell of wood smoke, of a feeling of delicious mystery as well as safety, of love and belonging, and the voice of my grandmother, my Nana, as I sat in her lap. She was giving me the story of the Stone Child, a little boy who was an orphan. He was so lonely that he had wrapped himself around a stone. She said that this was my story, a gift from her to me, and that I would remember the story when I needed it.
She told me that the child would not let go of the stone, not to eat, or to go into the tepee to sleep, or the play with the other children. Some of the people kept making fun of the child, and this had only made him cling all the more to the stone.
“What, are you going to marry that stone?” they taunted. “Are you going to make it your wife?”
The stone drained all the warmth from the child and made it sickly. My grandmother told me that if the child did not find the courage to let go of the stone, that it would never find its true mother, which is the mother that resides in the heart. This is the mother that we take with us when we leave our childhood home and go out into the world. Although the child did not have a real mother, it was important that he find his true mother, otherwise, he would never find his true self, and his spirit would wander, weeping and never finding a place to call home.
Sitting there, gazing up at the hawk, I went back to that horrible place that my mother had shown me as we sat there having our morning coffee, on her back patio, in the early morning desert sun. There was a terrible weeping there, and I didn’t want to get any closer because there was so much pain and grief and such bitter loneliness in it. But the hawk had sent me on this journey for a reason and I knew I had to search for what I was sent here to find.
I found the child, a little girl, wrapped around a huge cold stone. Gently, I pulled her arms from the stone, holding them firm although she struggled and fought.
‘No, no, no,’ she wailed. ‘Give me back my stone!’
‘There, there, there,’ I told her. ‘I am here. I am here. Don't cry.’
‘Nana?’
‘No, not Nana. But close enough.’
I embraced the little girl, held her to me. Her hair was a dark brown, like mine without the grey, and her eyes were the colour of my father's. I thought of a the promise that had been made to this little girl, a very long time ago, by someone who loved her more than life itself. The promise was sincere, but could not be kept, because life was like that sometimes. Could I fulfill that promise?
I looked into those eyes, identical to my own, and told her, from my heart, that we were together now, and that we would always be together, no matter what, and that she would never ever ever be alone again.
Monday 7 April 2008
Thank You For The Rainbow
In the end, she had her way. I think I knew she would. I wouldn’t acknowledge it, being the silly woman that I was, still, in my old age, convinced that my mother’s love for me would surely intervene and she would keep her promise. I believed, really believed that this time it would be different, that her stubborn selfishness would not prevail. But when I look back at those last moments together, I know in my heart that I suspected the truth, but then felt ashamed of my suspicions. There were hints and clues, which I chose to ignore. The truth is she did what she did because of who she was, who she always was. It should have been expected. It was so obvious.
But on that day in October, when we said what was to be our final goodbye, there was a moment when she dropped her impatience at my leaving and became gentle and kind. I have that moment captured in a chance photograph; my husband’s attempt at happy family normalcy, he and his camera. Our foreheads are touching, like two old women sharing a secret. The cold desert sun was on us, lighting her with its crisp brilliance, giving her an angelic quality. She had become shorter than I over the years, with the compressed torso of the very old, out of proportion to her arms and legs, but still elegant in her stance and bearing. Her fine beautiful face was ravaged with the dry wrinkles of age and life events; the tragic loss of a son at an age when motherhood was still in its first bloom, a year of fighting cancer, a year of nursing her own mother through her final days, and finally, the death of her beloved husband. Her short clean hair was a rich dark brown, missing any hint of her natural grey, a concession to her vanity, her hair being the last of her beauties that she was able to salvage from those years of hardship and grief. She had glanced at the camera as the picture was taken, and a thought was captured, that this would be the last moment she would share with her first born daughter. She knew.
As was her request, she was to be buried next to dad, in a large cemetery in the Mojave Desert, a huge expanse of green amid the juniper, mesquite, and yucca. The cemetery was overlooked by foothills only a few miles away, and in the distance the mountain wildernesses stood as a majestic backdrop to the desert’s serenity. I had spent many nights up in those foothills, listening to the coyotes on their nightly prowls, snug and safe in the quilts and warmth that was my childhood home. But the coyotes had left the valley many years ago, taking with them my childhood. Since then, other childhood companions followed; the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, a brother, one by one, each in their turn, passing beyond the veil. But the ache of their passing had been dulled by time because, like all the countless cousins, my sister and I had left the valley in our youth, taking a different path, searching for meaning somewhere far away from the generations of the past, looking only to our future and the future of those who would follow.
One remained of the old generation; my mother’s youngest sister. I thought it odd that, in the end, it was the oldest and the youngest of seven daughters that would be the last to go. My aunt was like a daughter to my Mom. Because she was so young it was my mother who had raised her. But I could never think of her as sister. Although she was softly spoken, she was also very stern, and shy, I think. She gave the impression of snobbery, which I am sure was not her true nature, and encounters with her often left me feeling uncomfortable, as if I had done something uncouth but could not quite put my finger on it. Because of this, I never felt obliged to question her.
She adored my mother, and would do anything for her. And it was for this reason that it was my aunt who was there at the end, being the only one who my mother trusted with her secret, her wish to die alone.
“Prepare for the worst,” my aunt told me when I made the last of my weekly calls to chat with Mom. No other words were needed. Until that moment we had engaged in a make believe dialogue, the only rule being that we never acknowledged the truth; that Mom was dying. I did what she told me to do, made preparations, but not what she expected. She had asked that I stay home, that I forego the journey of several thousand miles because Mom had said not to. Instead of doing as I was told, however, I made preparations to rush to her bedside, desperate to say goodbye.
Then, several hours later, my little sister called, crying uncontrollably, to tell me that Aunty had called and that Mom was gone.
“What are we going to do?” she wept. I know she meant,” What will we do now that Mom was gone?” But I was intent on the moment, and on my anger, that I had been denied that which had been promised, that she would tell me if she was dying so that I could be there to say goodbye.
“We are going to bury our mother," I said. "That's what we are going to do.” We went into action, a plan in place, knowing that no one could deny us this, not our aunt, and not even our mother. Our defiant determination drove us, and got us through the day.
I finished packing and left for the airport, dressing for Mom in dark tailored slacks and a white silk blouse, her favourite, forgetting the circumstances of my journey. I knew my sister would choose in her dress a statement of individuality; the rebel daughter. I had heard that she adorned dreadlocks these days, and had a diamond pin in her tongue. She always said, in her demeanour, "I am me." I always said in mine, "I am your daughter." Our statements were contrary to our desires. She wanted to be her mother's daughter, and I wanted to be me. We were opposites, my sister and I, and yet we were kindred spirits.
We met up at the airport. From a distance, I heard her cry, “Look at you, Miss Professional Business Woman!”
“Look at you, Miss Hippy,” I replied, and we threw our arms around each other, two sisters playing dress up, and wept.
Why, mom? Why did you want to be alone? All we wanted was to hold your hand once more and say goodbye? We wanted to share those last moments, share our lifetimes with you, to make it all meaningful. And now you are beyond caring, beyond providing answers, beyond knowing how much, in your final act, you have devastated those who loved you the most.
Being together, we faced the crisis, spending an evening at the house in the foothills, sharing our grief, reminiscing over the distant past, now given over to the coyotes. In the morning, we left the house to do that which was our birth right; to bury our mother.
It was windy and bitterly cold that day. There was a threat of showers, which gave the desert a blue grey aspect and sharpened the outlines of the distant mountains. The wind smelled of damp sage with a hint of ozone from the night’s lightening storm. Because of the weather, we dressed in good warm clothes with sensible shoes, not in black. We were to be the only mourners, Aunty having decided to honour our mother's wishes. And even though Mom had specifically said no flowers, we picked some up along the way; a beautiful bouquet of deep red roses.
We stood silently as four workmen made preparations at the gravesite, each dressed in faded jeans and worn work shirts. There was a white hearse in the road, with a polite looking young man, in formal black, shivering, standing next to the open tailgate, holding court with my mother’s casket. I wondered if the black clad driver and hearse were a kindness to my sister and me. Did they bother with these things when there were no loved ones there?
I walked over to the hearse, leaving my sister at the grave overlooking the workers and their activities, too numb to do anything else. The casket was made of fine grained oak with a clear polished finish. I placed my hand on it to caress the wood.
A child cried, “Mommy?” The wind stole the word and it was gone almost before it was spoken.
“What will we do now?” replied the wind. “We are so afraid, so alone. Who will be our mother now?”
I had no answers for the wind.
Standing there, looking at the casket and thinking of you inside, I wondered what it was like the day we met, so long ago, back in the age of innocence. Did you hold my tiny hand in yours and marvel at my firm grasp? Did you count my toes and fingers? Did you stroke my cheek to feel my newborn softness? Did you foolishly promise to forever protect me from all harm and to always be my closest friend, the way I foolishly promised your grandchildren?
I looked over at my sister, the other orphan, standing by the workmen, looking down into the depths of the grave, clutching the forbidden roses. She appeared to be stunned, from grief or cold, either or both.
All she wanted was to make your life worth living, Mom. How can I ever forgive you for what you have done to her? Will she ever feel loved again?
And then I saw it, the rainbow, perfectly centred over the grave, embracing my sister, a miracle on this most terrible of days. It was truly the most beautiful rainbow I had ever seen, with each end clearly visible and firmly anchored, and with all colours vibrant and alive.
“As high as the sky, as wide as the hills, as deep as the ocean,” you always told us, when we asked you how much you loved us. “I am here,” the rainbow said.
I find it strange that we spend most of our lives desperately trying to understand those we love, and that the understanding we seek always seems to elude us. Even when they are gone, we still reach out to them. I don't think I ever really understood any of them; my grandparents, all the aunts and uncles, my brother, my father, and now my mother. Close or distant, it didn't matter; except that those who were the closest to me were the ones I understood the least. And now it's too late. You're gone, and I am forever changed. The best I can do, I suppose, is to believe in the love that I knew was there, remember the little things you did to show it. I know you did your best, Mom. I will never know why you wanted to be alone when you died, or why you decided to betray your promise to me, and I will just have to settle for that. It will have to be enough and I will have to move on from this place.
The workmen came over to the hearse and took my mother, holding handles so beautifully carved that one might wonder at their brief time in the light. Those handles would only know the calloused and dirty hands of hard work instead of the touch of loved ones. In some way, that seemed appropriate. It was a statement of who you were.
The workers carried the casket towards the rainbow, the gateway to heaven, four strangers as your pall bearers, your oldest daughter the only mourner in the procession. The wind called to you, and I could do nothing but follow.
When I reached my sister, I placed her hand on the coffin, She was trembling uncontrollably now, bewildered, and I knew that the touch of wood would heal and calm. The workmen stepped away to leave us, and patiently waited at a distance. We clung to each other, embraced by the rainbow; two frightened children, still needing mommy to make things all better; two daughters, wondering still, as many daughters do, did you truly love us, and knowing in our hearts that of course you truly did; two women, sharing thoughts with all women who have rejoiced and suffered for the sake of love and wondered in the end was it really worth it after all; two mothers, knowing the pain of childbirth and the ecstasies and agonies of motherhood; two sisters, turning gray, orphans now, bound forever in grief. You wanted to be alone at this time, Mom, and yet you had a multitude.
We stepped away and the workmen silently came back to lower the coffin. The roses had taken on a coat of mist; tiny diamond teardrops; a gift from the wind. We threw them in, one last act of defiance, one that we knew you would overlook and forgive.
Your rainbow stayed with us, Mom, strong and determined. Wispy grey clouds had frayed the edges, jealous of the magnificent beauty, threatening to steal this last bit of love you gave to us. You kept them back, as long as you could, until you couldn’t do it anymore.
But on that day in October, when we said what was to be our final goodbye, there was a moment when she dropped her impatience at my leaving and became gentle and kind. I have that moment captured in a chance photograph; my husband’s attempt at happy family normalcy, he and his camera. Our foreheads are touching, like two old women sharing a secret. The cold desert sun was on us, lighting her with its crisp brilliance, giving her an angelic quality. She had become shorter than I over the years, with the compressed torso of the very old, out of proportion to her arms and legs, but still elegant in her stance and bearing. Her fine beautiful face was ravaged with the dry wrinkles of age and life events; the tragic loss of a son at an age when motherhood was still in its first bloom, a year of fighting cancer, a year of nursing her own mother through her final days, and finally, the death of her beloved husband. Her short clean hair was a rich dark brown, missing any hint of her natural grey, a concession to her vanity, her hair being the last of her beauties that she was able to salvage from those years of hardship and grief. She had glanced at the camera as the picture was taken, and a thought was captured, that this would be the last moment she would share with her first born daughter. She knew.
As was her request, she was to be buried next to dad, in a large cemetery in the Mojave Desert, a huge expanse of green amid the juniper, mesquite, and yucca. The cemetery was overlooked by foothills only a few miles away, and in the distance the mountain wildernesses stood as a majestic backdrop to the desert’s serenity. I had spent many nights up in those foothills, listening to the coyotes on their nightly prowls, snug and safe in the quilts and warmth that was my childhood home. But the coyotes had left the valley many years ago, taking with them my childhood. Since then, other childhood companions followed; the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, a brother, one by one, each in their turn, passing beyond the veil. But the ache of their passing had been dulled by time because, like all the countless cousins, my sister and I had left the valley in our youth, taking a different path, searching for meaning somewhere far away from the generations of the past, looking only to our future and the future of those who would follow.
One remained of the old generation; my mother’s youngest sister. I thought it odd that, in the end, it was the oldest and the youngest of seven daughters that would be the last to go. My aunt was like a daughter to my Mom. Because she was so young it was my mother who had raised her. But I could never think of her as sister. Although she was softly spoken, she was also very stern, and shy, I think. She gave the impression of snobbery, which I am sure was not her true nature, and encounters with her often left me feeling uncomfortable, as if I had done something uncouth but could not quite put my finger on it. Because of this, I never felt obliged to question her.
She adored my mother, and would do anything for her. And it was for this reason that it was my aunt who was there at the end, being the only one who my mother trusted with her secret, her wish to die alone.
“Prepare for the worst,” my aunt told me when I made the last of my weekly calls to chat with Mom. No other words were needed. Until that moment we had engaged in a make believe dialogue, the only rule being that we never acknowledged the truth; that Mom was dying. I did what she told me to do, made preparations, but not what she expected. She had asked that I stay home, that I forego the journey of several thousand miles because Mom had said not to. Instead of doing as I was told, however, I made preparations to rush to her bedside, desperate to say goodbye.
Then, several hours later, my little sister called, crying uncontrollably, to tell me that Aunty had called and that Mom was gone.
“What are we going to do?” she wept. I know she meant,” What will we do now that Mom was gone?” But I was intent on the moment, and on my anger, that I had been denied that which had been promised, that she would tell me if she was dying so that I could be there to say goodbye.
“We are going to bury our mother," I said. "That's what we are going to do.” We went into action, a plan in place, knowing that no one could deny us this, not our aunt, and not even our mother. Our defiant determination drove us, and got us through the day.
I finished packing and left for the airport, dressing for Mom in dark tailored slacks and a white silk blouse, her favourite, forgetting the circumstances of my journey. I knew my sister would choose in her dress a statement of individuality; the rebel daughter. I had heard that she adorned dreadlocks these days, and had a diamond pin in her tongue. She always said, in her demeanour, "I am me." I always said in mine, "I am your daughter." Our statements were contrary to our desires. She wanted to be her mother's daughter, and I wanted to be me. We were opposites, my sister and I, and yet we were kindred spirits.
We met up at the airport. From a distance, I heard her cry, “Look at you, Miss Professional Business Woman!”
“Look at you, Miss Hippy,” I replied, and we threw our arms around each other, two sisters playing dress up, and wept.
Why, mom? Why did you want to be alone? All we wanted was to hold your hand once more and say goodbye? We wanted to share those last moments, share our lifetimes with you, to make it all meaningful. And now you are beyond caring, beyond providing answers, beyond knowing how much, in your final act, you have devastated those who loved you the most.
Being together, we faced the crisis, spending an evening at the house in the foothills, sharing our grief, reminiscing over the distant past, now given over to the coyotes. In the morning, we left the house to do that which was our birth right; to bury our mother.
It was windy and bitterly cold that day. There was a threat of showers, which gave the desert a blue grey aspect and sharpened the outlines of the distant mountains. The wind smelled of damp sage with a hint of ozone from the night’s lightening storm. Because of the weather, we dressed in good warm clothes with sensible shoes, not in black. We were to be the only mourners, Aunty having decided to honour our mother's wishes. And even though Mom had specifically said no flowers, we picked some up along the way; a beautiful bouquet of deep red roses.
We stood silently as four workmen made preparations at the gravesite, each dressed in faded jeans and worn work shirts. There was a white hearse in the road, with a polite looking young man, in formal black, shivering, standing next to the open tailgate, holding court with my mother’s casket. I wondered if the black clad driver and hearse were a kindness to my sister and me. Did they bother with these things when there were no loved ones there?
I walked over to the hearse, leaving my sister at the grave overlooking the workers and their activities, too numb to do anything else. The casket was made of fine grained oak with a clear polished finish. I placed my hand on it to caress the wood.
A child cried, “Mommy?” The wind stole the word and it was gone almost before it was spoken.
“What will we do now?” replied the wind. “We are so afraid, so alone. Who will be our mother now?”
I had no answers for the wind.
Standing there, looking at the casket and thinking of you inside, I wondered what it was like the day we met, so long ago, back in the age of innocence. Did you hold my tiny hand in yours and marvel at my firm grasp? Did you count my toes and fingers? Did you stroke my cheek to feel my newborn softness? Did you foolishly promise to forever protect me from all harm and to always be my closest friend, the way I foolishly promised your grandchildren?
I looked over at my sister, the other orphan, standing by the workmen, looking down into the depths of the grave, clutching the forbidden roses. She appeared to be stunned, from grief or cold, either or both.
All she wanted was to make your life worth living, Mom. How can I ever forgive you for what you have done to her? Will she ever feel loved again?
And then I saw it, the rainbow, perfectly centred over the grave, embracing my sister, a miracle on this most terrible of days. It was truly the most beautiful rainbow I had ever seen, with each end clearly visible and firmly anchored, and with all colours vibrant and alive.
“As high as the sky, as wide as the hills, as deep as the ocean,” you always told us, when we asked you how much you loved us. “I am here,” the rainbow said.
I find it strange that we spend most of our lives desperately trying to understand those we love, and that the understanding we seek always seems to elude us. Even when they are gone, we still reach out to them. I don't think I ever really understood any of them; my grandparents, all the aunts and uncles, my brother, my father, and now my mother. Close or distant, it didn't matter; except that those who were the closest to me were the ones I understood the least. And now it's too late. You're gone, and I am forever changed. The best I can do, I suppose, is to believe in the love that I knew was there, remember the little things you did to show it. I know you did your best, Mom. I will never know why you wanted to be alone when you died, or why you decided to betray your promise to me, and I will just have to settle for that. It will have to be enough and I will have to move on from this place.
The workmen came over to the hearse and took my mother, holding handles so beautifully carved that one might wonder at their brief time in the light. Those handles would only know the calloused and dirty hands of hard work instead of the touch of loved ones. In some way, that seemed appropriate. It was a statement of who you were.
The workers carried the casket towards the rainbow, the gateway to heaven, four strangers as your pall bearers, your oldest daughter the only mourner in the procession. The wind called to you, and I could do nothing but follow.
When I reached my sister, I placed her hand on the coffin, She was trembling uncontrollably now, bewildered, and I knew that the touch of wood would heal and calm. The workmen stepped away to leave us, and patiently waited at a distance. We clung to each other, embraced by the rainbow; two frightened children, still needing mommy to make things all better; two daughters, wondering still, as many daughters do, did you truly love us, and knowing in our hearts that of course you truly did; two women, sharing thoughts with all women who have rejoiced and suffered for the sake of love and wondered in the end was it really worth it after all; two mothers, knowing the pain of childbirth and the ecstasies and agonies of motherhood; two sisters, turning gray, orphans now, bound forever in grief. You wanted to be alone at this time, Mom, and yet you had a multitude.
We stepped away and the workmen silently came back to lower the coffin. The roses had taken on a coat of mist; tiny diamond teardrops; a gift from the wind. We threw them in, one last act of defiance, one that we knew you would overlook and forgive.
Your rainbow stayed with us, Mom, strong and determined. Wispy grey clouds had frayed the edges, jealous of the magnificent beauty, threatening to steal this last bit of love you gave to us. You kept them back, as long as you could, until you couldn’t do it anymore.
Agnes's Choice
The last time I saw Agnes was shortly before her death. I lived in England, she in California, so visits were rare. She had just had a stroke, but had recovered enough to sit up on her own. She looked good; neatly dressed with her silver grey hair cut short like a boy’s. Her fair skin, although wrinkled, had a healthy shine to it, and her dark, almost black eyes still had that playful sparkle. Not bad for a 90 year old great-great grandmother, I thought.
She had lost her speech. She did try to tell me something when I introduced her to my husband. It sounded like; "Your husband is handsome," which wouldn’t have surprised me in the least seeing as how Agnes never missed a beat when it came to a handsome man.
She had lost her speech. She did try to tell me something when I introduced her to my husband. It sounded like; "Your husband is handsome," which wouldn’t have surprised me in the least seeing as how Agnes never missed a beat when it came to a handsome man.
The only word Agnes could speak clearly was a swear word, which was a little odd because Agnes never went in much for swearing before her stroke. But the doctors assured us that this was not unusual for people who had lost their speech. Nevertheless, she could provide a whole range of expressions with that single word. Such as “I have to go to the bathroom” or “I don’t like the taste of that,” or “Now, that’s a surprise.” We didn’t mind. In fact, I was very proud of how well she could communicate with that one word.
Evelyn, my mother, was looking after Agnes in her home, saying that she didn’t want her mother in a old folk’s home or in some hospital attached to tubes and generally ignored by the staff. I appreciated my mother’s sentiments, but they were always presented with reminders of the burden this placed on her, something that seemed to misplace the focus on who had suffered the crisis. The whole thing seemed to be about Evelyn; Evelyn’s sacrifice, Evelyn’s trials and tribulations, Evelyn’s life stolen from her now that she had to dedicate her days and nights looking after her ailing mother. She never spoke of Agnes’s sufferings or hardships, and this disturbed me.
Evelyn had told me recently that Agnes had stopped eating and was refusing her medication. I had an opportunity to witness this, and to fully understand Agnes’s choice.
“Here you go, mom. It’s time for your medicine, and you aren’t going to make a fuss, are you?” There was a tray with a few pills, a glass of water, and some nasty looking stuff in a tiny plastic cup. There was a look of bland stubbornness on Agnes’s face, matched by something like angelic righteousness on Evelyn’s. They made eye contact, symbolically locking horns.
I guess you would call it a physical test of wills. There wasn’t much to it, though; just Agnes’s calm glare and half-clamped lips. She didn’t move. She just sat there. She didn’t offer her one word. I guess it wasn’t needed. But Evelyn was no match for Agnes. She finally gave up and left the room. Agnes looked at me, saddened, as if she thought that it was unfortunate that I had witnessed this thing. I thought of Evelyn in the kitchen. I could see her in my mind, leaning on the kitchen counter, head bowed, that pose that I had seen a thousand times from my bedroom door as she prepared herself for yet another day of selfless servitude. That was Evelyn. She didn’t see these things from another person’s perspective. It was only another chapter in her book of martyrdom. I think, early in her domed marriage to an alcoholic and abusive husband, she had traded in her dignity for this state of self pity. She savoured it, like a bold Vindalo curry, a dish known for its fire, for the way it seared the tongue, gave it life, so that she could proclaim to the world, ‘ME!’ It was how she chose to cope.
But Agnes, now that’s a different story. She fought to keep her dignity, running away from a suppressive husband, my grandfather Lloyd, Sherriff of Gilroy, who had the town in his back pocket and sent his buddies out looking for her with their flashing lights and sirens every time she ran away. They kept finding her; kept bringing her back, until the day she fled beyond even Lloyd’s influence. I’d heard the story from Agnes, and I was always proud of her for her courage. It was one of many lessons I learned from her – the value of courage.
I looked around at the scene, my mother’s house, Agnes in her chair, sitting there, small, sad. I thought of the things my mother said about keeping Agnes home, her never ending sacrifice. I wondered about the bathing, and the dressing, and the putting to bed. I wondered how it was with Agnes, living in that circumstance, the cause of my mother’s martyrdom.
Did you ever think it would be your eldest daughter who would steal your dignity? I thought, looking at Agnes as she looked at me.
Then the sparkle came back, the playful spirit. She smiled a lopsided smile, the best she could manage, raised one eyebrow, and gave me her one word, almost in a whisper, like a secret shared, that simply said, What? Her? Steal MY dignity? Never! Now you just listen to me, dear grandaughter. No one can steal your dignity.
Yes, Agnes kept her dignity, and died quietly in her own bed in the middle of a windy October night. It was her choice. And I am forever grateful for that one last lesson she taught me, that no matter what life hands you, dignity is a matter of choice.
Evelyn, my mother, was looking after Agnes in her home, saying that she didn’t want her mother in a old folk’s home or in some hospital attached to tubes and generally ignored by the staff. I appreciated my mother’s sentiments, but they were always presented with reminders of the burden this placed on her, something that seemed to misplace the focus on who had suffered the crisis. The whole thing seemed to be about Evelyn; Evelyn’s sacrifice, Evelyn’s trials and tribulations, Evelyn’s life stolen from her now that she had to dedicate her days and nights looking after her ailing mother. She never spoke of Agnes’s sufferings or hardships, and this disturbed me.
Evelyn had told me recently that Agnes had stopped eating and was refusing her medication. I had an opportunity to witness this, and to fully understand Agnes’s choice.
“Here you go, mom. It’s time for your medicine, and you aren’t going to make a fuss, are you?” There was a tray with a few pills, a glass of water, and some nasty looking stuff in a tiny plastic cup. There was a look of bland stubbornness on Agnes’s face, matched by something like angelic righteousness on Evelyn’s. They made eye contact, symbolically locking horns.
I guess you would call it a physical test of wills. There wasn’t much to it, though; just Agnes’s calm glare and half-clamped lips. She didn’t move. She just sat there. She didn’t offer her one word. I guess it wasn’t needed. But Evelyn was no match for Agnes. She finally gave up and left the room. Agnes looked at me, saddened, as if she thought that it was unfortunate that I had witnessed this thing. I thought of Evelyn in the kitchen. I could see her in my mind, leaning on the kitchen counter, head bowed, that pose that I had seen a thousand times from my bedroom door as she prepared herself for yet another day of selfless servitude. That was Evelyn. She didn’t see these things from another person’s perspective. It was only another chapter in her book of martyrdom. I think, early in her domed marriage to an alcoholic and abusive husband, she had traded in her dignity for this state of self pity. She savoured it, like a bold Vindalo curry, a dish known for its fire, for the way it seared the tongue, gave it life, so that she could proclaim to the world, ‘ME!’ It was how she chose to cope.
But Agnes, now that’s a different story. She fought to keep her dignity, running away from a suppressive husband, my grandfather Lloyd, Sherriff of Gilroy, who had the town in his back pocket and sent his buddies out looking for her with their flashing lights and sirens every time she ran away. They kept finding her; kept bringing her back, until the day she fled beyond even Lloyd’s influence. I’d heard the story from Agnes, and I was always proud of her for her courage. It was one of many lessons I learned from her – the value of courage.
I looked around at the scene, my mother’s house, Agnes in her chair, sitting there, small, sad. I thought of the things my mother said about keeping Agnes home, her never ending sacrifice. I wondered about the bathing, and the dressing, and the putting to bed. I wondered how it was with Agnes, living in that circumstance, the cause of my mother’s martyrdom.
Did you ever think it would be your eldest daughter who would steal your dignity? I thought, looking at Agnes as she looked at me.
Then the sparkle came back, the playful spirit. She smiled a lopsided smile, the best she could manage, raised one eyebrow, and gave me her one word, almost in a whisper, like a secret shared, that simply said, What? Her? Steal MY dignity? Never! Now you just listen to me, dear grandaughter. No one can steal your dignity.
Yes, Agnes kept her dignity, and died quietly in her own bed in the middle of a windy October night. It was her choice. And I am forever grateful for that one last lesson she taught me, that no matter what life hands you, dignity is a matter of choice.
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