Doors to a Mortuary
As we drove back into town, the question that I began to ask on a level subtle to the outside world, but more like a deep scream on the inside, "Am I going to be able to rejoin my home and world here without Koa?” As we drove past the mortuary, it seemed my car almost slowed down involuntarily. Everything became silent and surreal as I looked over at the doors to the light tan, unobvious building. It seems that this is the first time I have looked at those doors since I walked through them to prepare Koa's body for burial.
Was I as brave as I remember myself that day? Basket in hand full of essential oils, smudge, baby Pendleton blanket, bolo tie his Grandpa made for him and a waterbird fan meant to be for women’s medicine. It was as if I knew what to do and had the strength to do it. It didn’t seem to phase me that his body was cold as an ice cube and stiff as a board. His lips were dry and his once full-of-life face expressionless. I hadn’t seen him since the day he died in the hospital. I just marched to continue to do my job as a mother. My baby needed me to do his final preparations, to leave this human body behind. He needed me to adorn him like a little king, a master, a person of deep honor. I felt like it was my sacred duty to him to see him all the way through until his body was planted like a seed for the earth to take care of.
I don’t know why I never looked over at those doors to the mortuary the last year and a half. I have driven by daily and some days never thought to look and other days chose not to. Tonight was different. It was like I was finally able to look. Like it was time in my recovery to look. The entrance was well lit and the building surreal, but erie. IT LOOKS LIKE ALL THE OTHER MORTUARIES I HAVE SEEN! Sort of like it’s designed for old people to be there when they die. It looks inside and out like an old person's home who hasn’t owned anything new since 1970.
The man who keeps it is tall. I mean really tall. His eyes are kind and dark with hollow deep sunken sockets to cradle them. He, too, wears clothes that are outdated and stale in smell. He blends with the environment well. I wonder how he felt washing the blood and shit off of Koa knowing the mother would soon be coming to see him. This big giant man and this little boy soul in an agreement made after death. I pictured them quiet in a room together doing the work they needed to do.
I was relieved to arrive and find Koa cleaned of the blood and other body fluids that came at his time of death. I was prepared to do this work myself, but all of the sudden, it seemed so appropriate that this man who holds these agreements with the deceased had already cleaned Koa. I thought to myself, "He’s much more suitable than I to do such things.” It seemed it was finally something someone did who didn’t ask me first, freeing me from at least one moment of having to face this tragedy. There were so many decisions to be made and now I had one less task to dread.
As my car creeps past, with all the memories of this place, I wonder how many tears have been cried in that building. How many people’s dreams have been shattered under the roof of that one place on earth? How anyone was ever able to walk in the doors and back out again? I am home now. Ten days away felt more like a month or six years. Nonetheless, I sit here immediately drawn back to the intimacy of Koa’s death and this grief. I must own and transform it into medicine.
Aho.
Flashes of Koa in real life are getting closer to my awareness. It’s unbearable. It makes me dizzy and unable to breathe. Literally, if I take another breath, I feel like it will bring the memory closer to me and I will implode. I am aware in those moments that I have yet to truly meet the memories square on. It’s like this otherworldly fog has kept a veil between me and Koa. Once in a while, the fog clears, giving me a full view of the little boy I lost. A visceral full-body experience of seeing him in front of me. My system only allows a flash of him to enter my consciousness, then the fog comes again to ease the impact. When this first started happening about five months back, I claimed I was coming out of shock. I see now that I am not out of shock. I come out for moments of clarity, only to feel my system pull me back into the protective shell against such trauma. The one thing that is now different from five months ago is that I am aware that UNDERNEATH this shock lies a moment or many moments I must face sometime. Moments of the truth of his death that collide with the immense love I have for Koa and the unending desire and longing I have to hold him in my embrace. When the two meet, death will tell the Mother that she will never ever hold that boy again.
Why do I still expect him to come running around the corner making this whole thing a bad dream or just my imagination? I think I lose track of reality. Time and Space. Sometimes I allow myself to imagine he was still here to see how it might feel. Bad idea!!!
It seems that whenever I am embarking on something fun or trying to create another family moment of joy, one part of my heart is opened only to be met by an immense and inevitable heaviness that will counter that joy. The heavy feeling is the one that seems to win. Koa’s gone and I don’t know how to make an experience feel joyful in my family anymore. I go ahead with the motion but it becomes just that - a motion to try and keep the family bond and create happiness for Banyan. Family movie night, ice cream, cuddles. It’s all empty for me. It’s like one part of me is going up while the other part of me is going down. I become paralyzed and distracted.
I don’t know how I could hold my son when he died, clean his body, bury him myself, love without him for one and a half years, and still have parts of me not know he died. I want to call it fragmentation, but my sweet midwife just keeps reminding me it is just parts of me still in other worlds not yet fully landed here. Am I still dancing across the veils? Are the feelings of reality that I feel impending just moments when the angels set me back down here on earth? Is mercy allowing my consciousness to make a slow transition back to my daily life, knowing that if I faced Koa’s death all at once it would kill me? Strange there are moments I feel I am recovering and parts of me are met a short time later with a feeling of insanity and the fear that I am going to go absolutely crazy from the immense pain of missing my little boy. People die I tell myself. We are all going to die, but when I realize it was Koa who died I just shake my head in disbelief. The ways he was alive were so alive. How could he just be gone???? I want to scream, “Fuck you life! Fuck you!”
I am in a moment tonight where I must pray for the angels to be with me. The grief is building into a necessary release. It will just keep flashing in and out until one of the flashes turns into a memory that I can’t turn away from. At that moment I will not be saved by this fog, the shock, or by the angels. It will be a moment where I am truly on my own as a human mother who lost her precious child, writhing, crying, letting whatever fire that needs to burn envelope me entirely, just waiting for mercy to come back for me and say, “Enough! She’s had enough!”
Although I know the spirit of light will come for me in these moments I can’t remember when I’m in it. The only thing I can see and feel is the destruction of a life I loved and the missing of a child I nurtured with every cell of my being. My Koa. My long-haired, sweet smiling, joyful, laughing, screaming, demanding, big boisterous boy who came as a gift and left leaving tears. I am doing all of the right things: ceremony, writing, talking, grieving. Even these things will not save me in these moments of pain. It’s like the gods have left and I am on my own to face life’s truths. The bitter realities are met by a baren inner landscape followed by cries for help and pleas to be spared. I have this house that I love so much. It’s a graveyard here for me now. A place where I can have all of this comfort and security that is full of discomfort and insecurity. The spirit of this home for me died with Koa. I can’t let it in, this house and its gifts.
Goodnight life I am living.
Aho. V
Tonight, I went to a Jewish baby naming ceremony. The amount of song and celebration was uplifting and touching. Outside of the Native American ceremonies I have attended, I have rarely seen or been a part of ceremonial life in our culture. Ceremonial life that is both spiritual, musical, and honoring of ancient energies. There was such reverence for new life present in all who attended. The prayers were laid down to protect, bless and honor this child in a way that connected her to her lineage and her heritage. As they laid her little body across the Torah table and chanted, I remembered a teaching I received some time back. The exact teaching eludes me, but the meaning of it was that when we feel a sense of belonging to something in this life, when we are given a path and people to walk that path with, then we can feel our roots here on the earth and the risk of losing oneself greatly decreases. Tonight the parents, grandparents, and congregation came together around this little one to make sure she does not get lost in this life. Their words and love will guide her and the feeling of the container around her, right from the start, being so strong will guide her confidence. Like a silk thread, they sewed a cocoon around this little one with song, dance, prayers, blessings, and sacred numerology, giving her a name that tied her to her parent's name and that tied her to the ancient texts.
I thought to myself at one point, as the tears fell from my eyes, “How anyone has ever made war against this beautiful walk of Jewish life?” Memories of all of the holocaust stories began to race through my mind and heart. Were these people and their religion a threat because they held such great spiritual power and joy in their worship? Why? Why? Why? I allow myself to leave those mysteries alone and take in the great beauty I am seeing before me. How time and history changed and brought us to this place with these families, completing each sentence with amen and other Jewish words that seem to mean "yes" to this life and the spirit of the Holy that resides within our breath.
At the end of the blessing, the Rabbi closed the ceremony by honoring those who have passed with a song and then honored our ancestors, those whose lives have come and gone, that led the path we now walk. The food represented life. It was flavor-filled, plentiful, and simple. The tables are decorated with mixes of people from all walks, races, and religions. Everyone was eating, laughing, and greeting each other with awe of what was witnessed. I left feeling blessed and realizing I had never been to a ‘life celebration’ in this tradition before, much less any celebration within the Jewish religion. My eyes were opened to a new, beautiful way of prayer and an old and cherished teaching. Aho.
It’s building up. I am flashing in and out of the pain and the memories. Right now feels like the memories of Koa living, alive and well are coming in so close. I am angry. I am sad. I am feeling a plea with life. “Please save me!” If I touch this amazing pain in its fullness, I will not live through it. I am dazed in a way. A sort of distance between me and Koa’s death has been so necessary and I now find myself begging for it to stay. I keep imagining what it would feel like if he was still here. Simple things like going to sit at the dinner table. “Oh Banyan, please eat your veggies.” “Koa, don’t throw food!!” I miss desperately the feeling of fullness Koa brought to this family. I am deeply lonely and feel this huge void, a deep hole in my life. Some moments, I will just be doing life and I will think of Koa. My body ceases to move anymore and my chest literally feels like someone just sucked the life force out of it. It’s heavy and dark all through the middle, where my heart once lived. Instant depression takes place of any vital movement. I am paralyzed until the grief releases me once again to my own voluntary movement.
I am beginning to feel homeless. These walls are not holding me in a good way any longer. The beautiful life I have built represents loss and pain in every direction. I do not value this house, this life I live within it, and the sustainment of life here. Everything a human needs to live and even be happy exists on a material level here. People are working daily to obtain this picture that I no longer can love. It has died. This house and its beauty, buried deep, six feet underground with my baby boy. I can not claim this as my dream any longer. I must let it go. It’s my next place of grief.
There are ten days more until we leave for Kauai. One way tickets and no need to return unless, of course, the life here calls me back. I am feeling so lost in a way and so confused. All of the luxuries of ‘thinking I know are gone. The moments of truth are upon me and illusion is not welcome here. I am on the other side of that fence now. The white picket fence where the perfect life and home sit on one side and reality, death, loss, and surrender into the unknown sit on the other. I suppose the life I am now looking to build must include both sides of the picket fence.
Another night. Another day. The feeling in my chest grows heavier. My anxiety is building. Mental confusion is starting to make its way in. I invite a healthy way to release. Tonight, I will call in Koa and ask him to help me understand. Breathing deep is not easy, but, on the other side of that breath is release. I pray it in.
Love V
