“… it is the oldest sound there was… souls flying away…”           Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

The night before my Mom stopped speaking, her sense of humor was fully intact.  We’d been looking at photographs together. Me sitting on the edge of her bed with a laptop.  Her well propped with pillows and covered only with a sheet, her feet out, newly polished toenails.  When she closed her eyes for a little rest I sat in a chair at her bed side, still sorting through photographs.  Randomly I asked if she’d like to see one of a Canada goose.  With closed eyes, she wryly replied she didn’t want to be goosed.  That was five days before she died.

Much later that night, Bill rounded the corner to enter her room, stagger stopping at the sight of me.  To his credit, he put his head down and forged his way into the room any way, taking her right hand.  Bill was my Mother’s husband of 24 years.  He’d gone missing for weeks after she was hospitalized.  I could have blamed him that she was here and not in her own bed.  For his own reasons he could blame me too.   Half hour later, their murmured conversation long gone silent, he and I yet to make eye contact – she turned to me and brightly asked if I’d go get her a donut.  Anything.  She’d barely eaten in months.  Sugar cookies were brought in by Natalie, her nurse, a while later – offered to her first, then me, next Bill.  I watched as mom’s delicate fingers pinched a morsel from her cookie and place it in her mouth. Thoughtfully, she put the cookie down reached over and took my hand in hers then did the same with Bill’s – in that moment, she was more than the bridge between us, she was a healer bridging the gap.  He left shortly afterwards.  I watched her peaceful face for hours, marveled at her graceful hands again and again as she half-slept.  I half-slept too, holding a fragile hand.

The next morning there was not a cloud to be seen in the Arizona sky.  Birds chirping in the distance refusing to be drowned out by the noise of a back-hoe across the street.  We were in the Joan and Diana Hospice Home, the windows were big, the curtains open wide.  On my last visit, Mom had asked me to read her poetry so I was armed with my favorites this trip.  Instead of poetry though, she asked if I’d read to her from the bible.  Of course.  What?  I’ve never read the bible, me either she told me.  I opened it arbitrarily and began to read.  Off and on throughout the morning she slept.  I kept reading, often pausing to look at her gentle face, thin and pale, jaw and cheek bones much too prominent.  Her breathe soft.

I whispered to her some time later I was going to go get a bit to eat could I bring her something from that great Mexican restaurant on 4th Street.  She wasn’t hungry.  Fact was, she hadn’t been hungry in a very long time.  How about a shot of tequila then I offered.  Smiling at me broadly with both her chapped mouth and piercing hazel eyes no thank you I don’t want tequila!  Unbeknownst to me, those would be her last words.  Talking would take up too much precious energy.  She had gone within – some place only the dying know, some place internal, someplace were words were no longer necessary.

In the days that followed, I don’t know how many times I told her I love her, that we all do.  I don’t know how many times I told her how grateful I was she was my mother, that we were all grateful.  I don’t know how many times I tried to comfort her with my impossible promise that we’d all take care of one another.  A pitiful lie that I desperately wanted to be truth.

Natalie had checked my Mother into JDHH a few weeks earlier.  Soft spoken and tender-hearted, she like the others on staff, Denise, Sue and Meredith, are angels with skin.  She encouraged me to make calls, tell everyone time was of the essence.  Family, friends, co-workers, everyone called back to speak to her.  Holding the phone to her ear, I saw her expressions registering emotions of recognition, she heard every word.  Every call was meaningful.

Pastor Rita came to sit with us a  little each day.

Bill came for some portion of each day too, even staying over two of these last few nights.  We talked about benign meaningless things, passing time.  One night he told me he had so much regret, so much he wanted her to know.  Tell her!  She may need to know!  She might be waiting to hear your words!  I left him with her.  From the hallway, I couldn’t hear the words – only his miserable grief choked tears strangling unknown confessions.  Then he disappear again.

I stayed as close as I could.  Maybe too close I feared, easing away at times to give her some space.  When I couldn’t yield any longer, I lay near to her again.  I needed to.  I prayed in my way.  Her expressions again registered the words, acknowledging with raised eyebrows, an attempted smile. Understanding.  I lay my cheek against hers.  I sang made up lyrics.  Again and again – I love you.  We love you.  I couldn’t say it enough.

Each day subtle shifts – she slipped deeper into herself.  Her breathing changing daily.  That’s one thing that stands out, the way her breathing continually changed in the next treasured few days.  Shallow and nearly imperceptible.  Slow and steady.  Gulping and erratic.  She remained sweet and peaceful in her closed eye silence.

I was reading aloud Mary Oliver’s Redbird, every page except the poem Iraq.  For some reason I felt the need  to spare her words of war, even Mary Oliver’s poetic take.  Just after 2pm she gagged unexpectedly.  Alarmed I jumped up to find her eyes wide open, wild with fear.  Another gag followed.  It seemed to taste awful and she fought it.  I believe she knew it was Death’s way of calling .  A dose of morphine.  Then the breath known as the death rattle began.  I’ve heard this breath before, though this time it was different.  I too was put on call, her life, the scantiness of what remained palpable.  My tears spilled over, my strength for her momentary gone.

Rita asked permission to come, offer last rites.  And kindly, she didn’t want me to be alone.  We each prayed – she, a Christian called Christ and angels, anointing Mom with oil.  I called on her Ancestors, her allies.  The room filled up with spirits, a cavalcade waiting to take her home.  I called Bill.

He came.  Rita left us alone with her.  Nurses in and out, in and out.  Then again, he was gone.

About 11 o’clock Meredith settled into a chair to keep watch on Mom and hold vigil with me.  The death rattle persistent.  Pause.  We’d watch closer.  Me never letting go of her hand, me telling her we all loved her again.  And again.  Her breathing  resumed.  Meredith had worked with Mom at the Gardens, an elder care facility.  Several of Mom’s caregivers had been co-workers at some time in the last 8 years, they treated her with such love, respectfully tending to her.  Her dying was also their loss.  Pause.  Her congested breathing continued in rasps and tears and pauses.  Still she was working things through, another breath, not yet complete.   Dying takes courage.  Dying is a miracle, like birth and life.

Moments before midnight the death rattle stopped.  In its place were fewer than a dozen normal breaths.  With them came the look of serenity on her relaxed face.  In those precious few moments she looked as though she’d found whatever she needed.  To me it looked like peace.  She surrendered into the arms of those waiting to take her over, across the veil and into new form.  She was stunningly beautiful.

We waited.

Time of death was called at 12:01am, October 2, 2013.

Meredith left me alone for as long as I needed.  I washed her body.  Brushed her hair.  I put her wedding ring in a box.  And wrapped her in a beautiful hand-made shawl that some unknown and kind volunteer had sewn for a stranger who just happened to be my mother.  Her name was Toni.  She was tenacious and funny.  She loved unconditionally.  I called my sisters, and Bill again, my son, her sister and brother.  I called Meredith who called the coroner.  A candle had been lit.

I drove on auto-pilot to the first hotel I could find with a vacancy sign.  Collapsing on the bed in my grief, the loneliness and loss flooded in.  That was the first time she came to comfort me from the other realm.

“Time eases all things.” Sophocles

I am ever grateful she allowed me to witness her crossing.  Ever indebted to her unceasing love.  She is still loving me.  Loving us.  And we are still loving her, it hasn’t eased.

All My Relations…

“We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle flys highest in the sky and was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds from the smallest to the largest – we send our joyful greetings and thanks.”                           ~ excerpt from Mohawk Thanksgiving Address, properly called Ohenten Kariwatkwa

I peer out the window before the treetops turn golden with the first morning sunlight.  There is faint mist swirling loosely above the surface of a glassy lake, seeming in a rush to be everywhere at once before it disappears in the warming sun.  At the edge of the cattail, there they are.  The boys are back!

Every summer while the ducklings are turning into teenagers, under the close supervision of their Mama, the male mallard will disappear.  Not only do they leave Echo Lake for points unknown but their summer plumage turns drab as the guide books call it.  After a molt that renders them flightless for a few weeks male Mallard become androgynous with eclipse plumage, looking exactly as the female do.  In these waning days of summer I have seen them on the wing in ever-growing numbers.  They are fast flyers, clocked at as much as 55 mph.  They are returning to Echo Lake while their plumage returns to a brilliant iridescence, a slow molt that occurs while the seasons slip from one to another.  The abundance of autumn includes many species of waterfowl.  It is common that the Mallard will stay through, using this lake for their winter shelter and spring breeding.

Science journals say that the Mallard is the ancestor of nearly all domestic duck breeds.  The folks who live across the water from me keep a pen of domestic ducks and chickens, I hear them regularly as I walk around the lake.  A few months ago one of them must have escaped as I noticed a domestic duck tagging alone with a Mama Mallard and her three kids, then juvenile who were not yet flying but still full of themselves.  The Mallard were quite aggressive towards this interloper – chasing it off, tugging at its tail feathers, generally being jerks towards it and causing it to limp severely for several days.   My heart just ached for it.  This domestic duck wasn’t to be dissuaded.  Every time I saw the family, there was the domestic limping along or swimming close behind them.  The tenacity of this duck was amazing.  Eventually the this family stopping chasing it off and it is no longer limping.   It has been granted a place with them.  The wild migrating birds that are returning to Echo Lake have accepted this duck easily as a part of their community, undistinguished from themselves.  We could learn a lot from this story as a human community I think – about acceptance, diversity, kindness, and a willingness to overcome regardless of the obstacles.

The medicine of the duck offers comfort and protection, it is associated with the astral plane and feminine energies, with water. Ducks teach us to handle our emotions with grace and ease.  They serve to teach us to maneuver through the various waters of life, to explore our emotions.  Their iridescent colors symbolic of  our spiritual potentials, as we come into our own through drinking the waters of life.   I encourage you to take a moment to meditate on this medicine, visualize the common and well-known Mallard – what stands out for you?  How can it support you in the transitions of your life, with the emotional waters of the day?  Allow yourself to receive the gifts of duck medicine, you may just be surprised by your own tenacity and strengths.

Mallards are a species of least concern to conservationist.  Their numbers are in the millions.  The same cannot be said for other duck species however.  Of the 42 duck species world-wide, there are 14 species of duck listed as either vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered.  The Boreal Songbird Initiative‘s conservationist Jeffrey V. Wells speaks at length as to the needs of the bird world and how ultimately these needs are for the human world and we’d be wise to tend swiftly to these ever increasing needs.  Using recycled toilet paper is one immediate way each of us can be a source of this protection of these endangered birds as well as the Standing Nation.

Wopila to the boys!  Wopila for the season!

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin ~ All My Relations

The 2996 dead at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 NYPD officers, 37 Port Authority officers.  The approximately 1500 volunteers who have died of disease in the aftermath.  And the estimated 422,000 suffering from PTSD or some form of disease.  6802 American men and women have died in uniform. Nearly the same number of contractors.  30500 coalition partners of war.  Those who committed suicide after returning home.  Those who were considered collateral.  All the families of the numbers above.

The 21,843 Law Enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty in the US since 1791 -73 law enforcement officers  & 14 K-9 officers in 2014.

The 20 million or more First Peoples who were  slaughtered after Europeans arrived in North America.  The 100 million buffalo.  The 400 thousand gray wolves.  The ivory woodpecker and passenger pigeon.  And countless other species of birds and four-legged, amphibians and lizards whose numbers have been reduced  a mere fraction since then.  All those species unknown yet destroyed.

The untold number of people who die by violence – every day.

All those exploited at the hands of another.

In memory of the Standing Ones – The 95% of Redwood forest that no longer exist.   Remembering the approximate world’s total net loss of forest area  is 7.3 million hectares per year. The Earth’s lungs, our rainforests, only 6% remain with an approximate 137 plant, animal and insect species lost every single day due to rainforest deforestation, about 50,000 species a year.

Remembering clean water and rivers gone dry.  And the 90% of all large fishes and 75% of smaller fishes that have disappeared from the world’s oceans, the coral reefs, marine turtles and estimated 100 million sharks fished annually for their fins.

The tops of most of the Appalachian Mountains.

The loss of ecosystems and healthy soil.

According to the Coalition on Homelessness approximately 37,000 homeless people who die each year in the US.

Untold Native languages and cultures.

There are no dates for commemorating the majority of this list.  There should be.  We should not forget the backs on which this country was built, nor the generosity of the earth and the precious plenty she provides.  Everyday we’d do well to honor the many species who have fallen – human, plant, animal, the earth herself – so we can live.

This post is by no means intended to diminish the losses on 9/11.  The suffering of the families is truly immeasurable.  My heart goes out to them.

And it is also true that there is so much more to remember. My heart is with them too.

Mitakuye Oyasin… all my relations.