I'm back from Oklahoma. again. Back from the funeral. back with a headcold.
it sucks to travel with a headcold.
Anyway, life begins again today. I am tired of travel, I am tired of emotional upheaval. I am so exhausted from all this living I've been doing, all I want to do is sleep sleep sleep.
It's always to hard for me to leave my family. Everyone was there- all my cousins and aunts and family and friends and relatives. My brother came from San Francisco, even. We all sat around and talked and visited and cried a little. We buried her next to my great grandparents and my uncles and aunts in the little cemetary next to the tribal complex. We poured tears over her casket and every person there took a moment to throw a handful of dirt on her grave. We brushed her casket with water from Warm Springs, our homeland. We gave her cattail pollen as a blessing. We sprinkled clay from Warm Springs into the soil that covered her, to help her find her way home. We gave offerings and sang songs in Apache, the way we always do when an elder dies.
In 1994 we buried my Grandfather in New Mexico. She was there, singing songs of grief as his body was lowered into the ground. She was there standing next to my other aunt, singing loud and clear in Apache. Now both of those aunts are gone as well, everyone from that family and that generation has passed on. Maybe other people just can't understand the incredible sorrow we feel when we lose an elder. She was our family's last link to that generation of people- the first born out of captivity following the Apache wars.
The amazing thing about it is her death convinced my brother to go to Oklahoma. He hadn't been there for probably 20 years, but now he's back. funny how we receive gifts in the midst of tremendous pain.
But seeing her casket slowly creep down into the deep hole they dug was horrible. That's when it hit me that she was gone. She won't be back to scoot around on her little scooter, to smile at us and teach us any more.
The whole time I was there I kept thinking about how much she would have enjoyed seeing us all together again.
just another story from the Apache chronicles.