Time Machines

if i believe

in death be sure

of this

it is

because you have loved me,

moon and sunset

stars and flowers

gold creshendo and silver muting

of seatides

i trusted not,

one night

when in my fingers

drooped your shining body

when my heart

sang between your perfect

breasts

darkness and beauty of stars

was on my mouth petals danced

against my eyes

and down

the singing reaches of

my soul

spoke

the green--

greeting pale

departing irrevocable

sea

i knew thee death.

and when

i have offered up each fragrant

night,when all my days

shall have before a certain

face become

white

perfume

only,

from the ashes

then

thou wilt rise and thou

wilt come to her and brush

the mischief from her eyes and fold

her

mouth the new

flower with

thy unimaginable

wings,where dwells the breath

of all persisting stars

e.e. cummings

The Industrial Revolution and Information Ages have aided in extending and enhancing our lives in many ways. In fact, the mortality rate in London for children younger than age five decreased from 75% in 1730 - 1749 to 32% in 1810 - 1829.

Yet, during the time when early deaths were more prevalent, death-related rituals were often less austere and forbidding. Western institutionalization has gradually swallowed death into it's economy with ritualization evolving into part of the orchestrated establishment of the funerary (and other) industry and where mourning practices are often strictly proscribed. In addition, today's funeral, on average, costs around $7000.00.

In many places, including the Cook Islands and Samoa, the dead are cared for in the homes by family members and then they are buried in the front yards of the family homeland. The homeland is never sold; rather, it is passed down from one generation to the next. Many of the tombs are above ground and family death is integrated into life in a way very different from Western culture.

Interestingly, the home funeral movement is emerging in the United States; a sort of grassroots time machine to the distant past.  Death doulas are being trained to assist those seeking home funerals for their loved ones- including babies and children who die.  Beth Knox knew intuitively that it was what she wanted when her seven-year-old, beautiful daughter, Alison Sanders, died in 1995.

Knox speaks of her experience and says,

"We're required by law to care for our children," she said. "But at the last hour, we're told that their body doesn't belong to us anymore. That makes no sense."

Knox found a funeral director willing to bring Alison's body home, where family members, friends and neighbors joined in a three-day vigil. By the time the funeral director returned to take Alison's body to her funeral and then to the crematory, Knox was, she said, ready to let her go.

Having imagined, as most parents do, that she could never endure the catastrophe of a child's death, Knox found that "when it actually happened, my senses were so highly attuned to the sense of love, I had a very precise presence of mind, very clear sense of direction." There is, she said, "a lot of comfort in being able to perform acts of love in these unbearable situations."

In most states, 45 to be precise, it is legal to care for one's own dead in the home. Oddly, many do not think to ask if they are permitted by the State to take their beloved one home; rather, it is assumed that the funeral home will whisk away the dead. So the men in gray suits are summoned and the 'body' is cleanly lifted off, out of sight, to a sterile room of foreign mortar and unfamiliar melodies harkening back three decades. And then the 'body', now recently unfamiliar to us, is taken to a cemetery two or twenty miles from home. It just feels so detached from the reality of death- and natural loving instinct. So many still do not understand their own rights with regard to their dead - the very dead to whom they still belong.

I wish I would have thought to ask 'permission' for a home funeral when Chey died. I wish I had my own piece of family land where I could bury her sacred remains. I believe I'd have chosen this if I had supportive others - like death midwives- guiding me.  It is certainly not something that all would choose; but still the choice should be offered for this uniquely antediluvian ritualization of the dead.  

If only time machines really did exist...

Barefoot walkabout

Today was glorious.  I woke up to perfect Sedona weather, the sun raying, birds singing, and Brewer Trail beckoning. Ingrid and I started up the trail with another friend.

Brewer Trail leads to a special place I call big rock, one of the best panoramics in town, and is about two miles straight toward the big sky.  We met a Native American man at the top of big rock, and a few brave meditative types. I wondered how many relationships healed there, and how many ideas were born there, how much reverie and introspect were discovered on this big, red rock. I wondered how many feet of different lands once stood there, and how many ancient, indigenous voices had spoken there. It's a holy place, that big rock.  The journey to big rock was filled with friendly discussions with Ingrid about life, and men, and work, and aspirations, and grief, and hope, and disappointments.

The journey back down big rock would be very different than the journey toward big rock. While I was on standing big rock, overlooking the herculean geological majesty of Sedona, I experienced a moment of perspicuity.  I decided I would walk all the way down the mountain barefoot on the rocky trail, my feet touching the ground.  

I climbed down big rock barefooted, and I felt different immediately. The direct contact from my skin to the sharp edges of the rocks and earth sent stinging sensations to my brain. Tiny rocks that had just gone unnoticed under my feet now pierced my soles, and I found myself navigating the trail with greater mindfulness of every step. I found myself in the moment, truly in each moment, not deviating from planning the next step. I had to avoid stepping on yet more cactus needles or, worse, into a hungry ant hill. "Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, OUCHHHH!"

For nearly two miles, I walked, and walked, and walked, feet to the burning earth, feeling every sensation. It was a ritualistic exercise in mindfulness and focus, my barefoot walkabout from Sedona's big rock.

It could have been just an impulsive oddity in which I'd chosen to engage. I could have missed the lesson of this walkabout. But I learned something from my trek down the mountain. I learned that I am stronger and more tenacious than I thought, and I that I can tolerate discomfort in exchange for the promise of learning. It affirmed that mindfulness is an important part of walking through life- awareness of surroundings and respect for the moment. I learned that I can navigate pain but not avoid it. I can adjust for rocks in the trail, and I can adjust for the barriers in life but that they are there, unavoidably, and I will face them. 

This impulsive ritual felt good- even through the pain- and I was glad to have taken something profound away from my hike. So I plan to continue the barefoot walkabout when I want to practice mindfulness. The soles of my feet will surely callus over time, but not before being sore and blistered during the process. I cannot reach the lesson without first having accepted the pain. Ah, such is life.

On My Terms

On My Terms

Every day he got up. 

Before sleep wore off, he was who he used to be. 

Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in…

and he moved and he moved and he moved. 

But no amount of movement being enough to make up for it. 

The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him saying, 

You were not there when your daughter needed you...

And as Flora twirled, other girls and women came through the field in all directions. Our heartache poured into one another 

like water from cup to cup. 

Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. 

It was that day I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. 

Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. 

It is like a flower or the sun; it cannot be contained.

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

On a searing July day in 1994, it was my turn to become familiar with horror on Earth, and it became my every day reality. 

Death trespassed on my body. Just moments before I was to bring forth life, Death came into my body and without permission stole my most precious piece of my self. My beautiful girl, all 8 lbs. with long, piano fingers, ebony curls, and fat creased thighs and wrists, succumbed to that which cannot be contained. My body was ready for her arrival. My brain made space for her. She belonged there, right there, with my other three who'd arrived the same way in 1986, 1988, and 1991. The trauma of experiencing birth in such intimate proximity to death cannot be described in any language. 

It would be years before I would come to terms with all that I had lost- and gained- in particular, the newfound guilt- an appendage for my body's betrayal of maternal duty (I’m not sure, even today, that my whole being has accepted the terms of this unilateral contract).

Hurried and unknowing voices told me what I should and shouldn’t do; how to mourn and how not to mourn; when to remember and when to forget; what was good for my children and how I would surely cause them irreparable harm. My loss- my grief- was being managed by others, coerced into convivial proscriptions of comfortability.

And Death, like a neglectful parent both loved and hated, held the key to both my freedom and my imprisonment.

They told me it would be bad for my children to see her lifeless body. It would cause them grief beyond repair. How would I know it was the not-seeing that would cause so much greater harm? I’d wanted to bring her body home for a day, show her the room that was to hold her cradle. Let her witness all the hours I’d meticulously spent cutting brown bear borders against the cornflower blue walls, until my fingertips blistered. They said I couldn’t, I shouldn't, and I didn't. 

I’d wanted to cremate her long ago, but I was told it “wouldn’t be good” for me.

It would be nearly 14 years before I would have the chance to right many wrongs. On April 11, 2008, I had the body of my child exhumed from the red earth. I watched from a respectful distance as my brain rewound the tape that played endlessly through the years. My neurons fired with fresh but familiar pain. On this day, I would take control back of my own experience of loss. And for one week, I had the my chance to experience my own trauma and regrief on my own terms.

It’s been much more difficult than I could have imagined it would be, the innards of my grief raw and exposed again to the light. But it was my way, with no one telling me I couldn’t rock her in unison with the neighbor's Cottonwood tree that swung in the wind. No one telling me that a one-way conversation with my dead child's own lovely bones would be plain crazy. No one telling me that I should scurry my children out the door, protect them from the pains of loving, shelter them from grief.  I held power over my experiences this time. 

And so I was able to burn my sage, and follow my mind down the rabbit hole. I took my time, fell asleep with my hand on the velvet pink box, where I'd earlier tied purple bows in knots to abate the morbid inquisitions of others, and myself.  And I captured my first photograph of all five children gathered together, four of whom emerged from my womb safely and one who would never smell the lavender or rosemary in our yard. Still, there was no one shielding me from my own willing, and even unwilling, suffering.  And for this, I have much for which to be grateful. 

Life is painful. Yes, it’s also joyful at times; but grief comes with it. It is unavoidable. The love you feel for someone is commensurate with the pain you will suffer when that person has died. And my suffering is, like the love I have for my dead child, inexhaustible and sempiternal. I’ve learned that suffering is not so bad, so long as its done in my own time, on my own terms.