Writing My Wrongs

I have the quintessential…poker face. I can look you dead in your eye and give no clue as to what I am thinking about whats being said to me. I learned that early. It’s usually when I am feeling compromised…I show no sign of interest. Straight faced.
I buried my mother last week…and I was straight faced. And all those around me, said I looked just like my mother, that I was serious, had a straight face and been through much, yet still strong. And my father being who he is, was my champion. He was my hero more than he’s probably ever been…well, maybe not ever been…but it was close.

I never speak/spoke about my mother because…well, she was never around for me to form a relationship with. I remember summers spent on the reservation…but even then, I don’t have memories of her being around, just of my grandparents.

In all these years, I didn’t resent my mother or have any bad feelings towards her. Matter of fact to be truthful, I didn’t have any feelings about her at all.
The last time I saw her was 9 years ago…and before that, it was 10 years. Between then and a month ago, I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. I knew nothing about who she was, what she did, or how she was.

Back story:
A couple of years ago I contacted my tribe looking for my mother. I asked that my information be passed on to her; to no avail. So some months ago, I contact my tribal bulletin (which is a newsletter for my tribe) and made somewhat of a plea asking for any help in finding any family members. I listed a few names so that people would know who I was related to. A couple weeks went by and I had gotten no reply. I was feeling a bit dejected. I finally looked at my “ad” and realized that the wrong email had been posted. I asked them to repost my “ad” but I received no response. So, once again…I was not knowing where she was or any of my family members from those early years on the Rez. The tribe is notorious for letting things fall through the cracks.

Present story:
Out of no where I received a friend request on FB from a name I had never heard of. I didn’t automatically delete it…I thought about it for a while and just let it sit. Finally, it dawned on me…this is the half brother that I had never met!
We started up a correspondence and continued to have long drawn out emails about who we were, what had been going on and other conversations that I sort of winged. After all, what do you say to a brother that you’ve never met? What do you talk about? And even though I sent out a plea for “answers”…now that it was in front of me…I was sort of lost. Growing up without having any siblings…as an only child…well, I don’t know what sort of conversations to have with a brother. It was foreign to me because all that I could relate it to was…meeting a new friend. I kept talking about his mother as if she wasn’t my mother. Asking how his mother was, if he saw his mother often and so on. Calling her mom just didn’t flow smoothly out of my mouth. I, sort of, felt like I was invading his space by calling his mom…my mom.

He mentioned that she was in the hospital but that she would be getting out soon. Told me the name of the facility that she would be heading to once she was released. He said she was getting better. So I let the topic of “her”…go…because…I guess I knew what I needed to know and...we started talking about him and my other half brother. Apparently for the last couple of years…well more years than a couple…they’d all 3 been very close. I felt…left out. Felt…some sort of way that I didn’t like…and didn’t understand. Up until this particular conversation…I hadn’t cared too much. Or so I’d thought.

So this is where I diagnosis myself…I cared on a level of, a selfish only child level…like…what about me! Not on the level of truly feeling like I had missed out on having a mother and 2 brothers. Not in a familial way but in a … I should have been apart of that life or at the very least…aware of that life, even if I was aware of it from the sidelines as I continued to enjoy the life I’d lead up until then. All very selfish. All very childish of me on many different levels. I get that. I know that.

As we are having conversations I am making my plans to move to New Orleans . I’m looking at houses and spent a good amount of time experiencing parts of NOLA that were unknown to me. I was dating Louisiana men, finally meeting old friends for the first time and trying to settle into becoming a woman of the south…a different kind of south. While I am going through this process I am staying in contact with my brother…letting him know practically every move I make. ‘Cause all the sudden…I have a brother! It’s weird…I don’t know what being a sister is all about, don’t know the first thing about being a sister to a brother…and just like that…I am happy I have a brother…two brothers.

I get back to NYC to set my plans in motion for the southern experience and out of no where…I decide I am coming out to the Reservation to meet my new (and old) family. I call my father and we set an action plan and I buy my plane ticket to visit the Rez. I am preparing myself for conversations. Getting my nerve up to discuss some things with the mother I have not seen as a mother…ever. Not needing answers for her absence…but just talking about whatever…everything. I am mentally girding my mind and my heart for the things I am about to find out about myself, them, and her.

...She’s been in the hospital for somewhere close to 2 weeks, not sure when she will be getting out…so I am rushing a trip that I thought I had more time to plan. My brother tells me he has told her I am coming. He says she said she wanted to see me, to speak to me and that she had smiled when he told her I was coming.
I call him up with my flight itinerary.
He calls me back 30 minutes later to tell me she has passed away.

I was numb. No tears. Regret, yes. But still, no tears. Straight faced, I put it all out of my mind… I detached myself from who and what. Two days later I am flying out of LaGuardia…straight faced. I land… and I thank my father for everything…he is there to meet me at the airport. He'd driven 18 hours to meet me, for this occassion. He looks at me and he hugs me, I have no words but to tell him I love him…and then he asks me how I feel… I tell him I haven’t processed it yet. He tells me he understands and asks me no more questions. I can tell he feels the same.

The next morning, we head out in the middle of a blizzard as we make our way on a 2 ½ hour drive through the mountains; over the mountains to the Reservation. The Reservation that I said I would never go back to. 4 million acres of desolate land that the government and the Mormons gave my people, after they had taken all the good toiling land, and the water ways that were wealthy with fish…they plopped us right in the middle of mountains...desert mountains with tumbleweeds and hard dirt. Where all that could be done with the earth was to maybe grow wheat. So the Nooch (Indians) took the barren land and tried to grow what we could…and in the process…we struck oil. And to this day, the Mormons are still trying to get to that oil and disband our tribe that has gotten smaller and smaller as the years have gone by.
What was once a thriving tribe…has now only 3000 tribal members on their enrollment. We could die out in another 20 years. Death rates are significantly higher in many areas for Indians compared to the U.S. general population, including tuberculosis (750% higher), alcoholism (550% higher), diabetes (190% higher), unintentional injuries (150% higher), homicide (100% higher), and suicide (70% higher)...we could die out in another 20 years. *IHS stats* This is where I am headed…to an area that is 150% below poverty level.

I am conflicted. I want to be associated with this part of me, I crave to know my heritage…but I feel like I am not yet where I need to be to do that. I remember my grandmother dressing me up in beaded moccasins, beaded shawls and dresses made of leather hides…taking me to Pow Wow’s and teaching me to dance the two-step with all the woman during the Bear Dance or the spirituality of the Sun Dance and its Native religious significance. I have memories that are flooding back to me and although I am emotional inside…I am straight faced on the outside.

When we got to the Reservation I called my brother to let him know where we were…he came to meet us and we followed him…he lead us to the mortuary.
I was not ready.
I got out of the car and within moments…family! Everyone on the reservation is related in some sort of way…and left and right, I was being introduced and re-introduced to people whose names I forgot the minute I heard them.
I was not ready.

I am not sure how many of you have ever been to a tribal burial…or the process that leads up to it, but it’s a spiritual and emotional overload (as is any funeral is I suppose.)
My native tongue is not written…it is phonetic. When I was on the reservation, when I was a child, I learned it. I have not been a child for a very long time…I’ve forgotten. So the prayers and the songs were foreign but…it resonated. Being her child…I was supposed to come up to the coffin before other family members, my brother motioned for me to come up…I went up and stood at the foot of the coffin…because I can not look inside…not yet.
I wasn’t ready.

The pallbearers came to take her to the hearse…and out of nowhere, my father is asked to take part, this woman who he hasn’t been married to in 40 years, he’s humbled and honored that the family still saw him fit. She was being taken to my brothers’ house for the wake. There is where she'd lay in state with her open coffin, the interior made of bear blankets. She would stay until it was time to take her to the tribal burial plot the next morning. Also there, is where they’d sing the 4 burial songs and pray…and then at midnight they’d put on her moccasins and again pray for her and sing 4 more burial songs…and then as they kept the burial fire going, on the front lawn, thru out the night and the next morning (the smoke from the pit fire was to clear her path into her next world)…they’d pray for her at dawn and sing 4 more burial songs for a straight hour. Through all of prayers the spiritual leader (medicine man) would cover us with the smoke from sage and elm. During all of this, I did not go up to see my mother.
I wasn’t ready.

My mother was adopted, this I knew. I just never remembered meeting any of her biological family. Apparently I had. Through out the day and into the evening, there would be a continous stream of people coming and going. Everyone had stories to tell me about when I was little and how my mother used to dress me in frilly dresses, which of course, was silly since I lived on the Reservation which was nothing but red clay dirt. Clay dirt I used to eat by the fistfuls. I remember my grandmother used to ask me if I’d been eating that “nasty dirt again”…I’d say “no”, not knowing I had a red dirt ring around my mouth.
Everyone told me stories about my mother and all the years I’d missed. They told me stories of a strong woman, a kind woman, a fun and loving woman, a woman that knew the path she chose was not the easiest but it was the path for her, about a woman who was a good woman.
And somewhere along the way…I started to wish…that I had known this woman.

So, sometime inbetween prayers and songs…when no one else was around…I finally went to see my mother. I touched her hand. I caressed her brow and felt her hair. And I secretly tucked a letter I had written to her inside her scarf by her heart.

I had written her a note to let her know that…
…she didn’t need to worry about me and what I thought or felt, she didn’t need to take any of those thoughts with her as she made her way to the Great Spirit…that despite all the years, all our tears and all our fears…that she didn’t have to wonder if I loved her. I did. She was and is my mother. I let her know that even though we hadn’t had the chance to have that last conversation…or look into each others eyes for the last time…that I know that everything happens for a reason and that she didn’t have to be in pain over the decisions she had made. That she was entering a new world where all those things are cast aside and to start her journey without regret…without looking back on the things of this life. I wanted her to know that her ancestors and my ancestors were waiting for her. This is the way of the Indian. This is the way she must go…without regret. It would make her next journey better for her. In that way.

Indian religion believes that life after death is just a contiuation of life already experienced. There is no death, only the change of the worlds.

On Thursday, after the sun came up, during the prayers...coals from the fire were brought in to put into the coffin with her, once they had burned the elm and sage again. Her face was painted with paint made from the earth, then they covered her face with 10 veils and completely wrapped her from head to toe in the bear blankets. Then those of us who wanted to, could place items in her purse so she would remember us in her new life, they loaded her "traveling clothes" into her coffin and closed the lid.

When we arrived at the sacred grounds and I was quietly re-introduced around the great circle of family and friends one by one…I had to shake the hands of all my elders who sat around the gravesite…I was placed next to my brothers at the top of the plot and it started to snow.
In the Indian culture…if the wind is blowing or there is rain or snow is a sign from the Creator that the footprints from this world are being swept away…because one needs to create footprints in the new world with their ancestors. It is a good sign that my mother was now leaving this life. In that way.

4 songs...4 verses to every song…sang 4 times. As the drummers played the tribal burial songs…they lowered my mother into the ground...it was with finality...

And, I cried.

And so we don’t forget her and her life she had here…never forget…and in the Nooch way…
I jumped across her grave…barefoot…in the snow.

The very dust upon which you stand responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.

- Chief Seattle @ the signing of the Treaty of Medicine Creek 1854

I didn’t have a mother like most people…didn’t have a traditional mother…but I had one none-the-less.
And although, I will never have answers to a lot of questions…or what some would say is closure to who my mother was…I am better off just by being apart of her home going.

MLJ-C
4/23/48 – 3/27/10

“I don‘t have no regrets.
I lived my life to the fullest.
I loved my life and everyone in it.
No matter what or where life took me,
I had a blast being me, but I don’t have no regrets.
Everything happens for a reason
Just like everything has a purpose in life.
Live life to the fullest and enjoy being
With the ones you love.
Life is too short to live with hatred and regrets.”
(On the back of her burial program, a poem written by her daughter-in-law)