This year, with the passing of both my parents (Mom March 20 and Dad July 10), has brought me into an even profounder intimacy with mortality, impermanence, remembrance, and grief journeying with all the questions and textures those contain. Following their departures from this life, I feel too a fresh and fuller sense of ancestral responsibility – like a torch has been passed, and yet far more than that. In learning to travel through this new (and yet also ancient and shared) territory, I sometimes feel I’m stumbling, finding and learning the path as I go. As I seek to process, navigate, interpret, and integrate these ineffable experiences, thoughts, and feelings, I’ve turned to an old faithful friend – poetry (or, my old friend came to me to light my way).

There’s a story, an experience, from which the poem I share here emerged. During the week before my Dad’s funeral I felt a deep urge to drive up to Crawford where Mom’s parents lived and are buried, just to revisit some childhood places and go see their graves. While at the cemetery I wished I had something to lay on the grave but that time I had nothing. So, I spoke with the delightful florist (Bluebird Flowers & Gifts in Alliance) who made lovely creations for both my parents’ funerals and for Mom’s grave, and requested her to make an arrangement for my grandparents’ grave. The next time I was out to Alliance I journeyed back up to Crawford and placed the arrangement at their headstone.

So many graves that seem so lonely and unremembered, seems a strange poignance in that … and my heart is more tender to that these days.
I have vowed that while I live, every grave of my ancestors is going to be honored and not look lonely but loved and remembered. For me, it’s one small but deep part of both being a good descendant and becoming a good ancestor, carrying forth with respect and gratitude all the good in my ancestors, inviting healing where it is needed, and continuing belovedness.

We Continue

Someday
we will be
remembered
only by Earth and Sky
and Spirit Creator
but enough that is
and perhaps the truest
remembering
as it emerges from the truest
knowing
of who we are
and of what we are made –
the stardust and energy
and all atoms
that formed our bones and our flesh
and the spirit
that filled and enlivened us
When our breath is no
more
Breath, Holy Breath, remains –
a spacious wind through Sky skimming over
Earth – all is
known, held, remains remembered

These words arrived Home
to me, while standing in the searing summer
sun of Nebraska’s high plains
at the grave of my grandparents, who
gave life to my mother, whose body of earth
also rests now beneath the earth
I stood remembering, flowers of silk
brought to lay before the stone to show –
those who rest here are still remembered
As I remained remembering, my heart
wondering, how many living ones know
or remember my grandparents
Mildred and Mervil Reece
(parents of LaDonna (born still), Leila, and Dwain)
who remains who might yet pass by this stone
with memory of these names and perhaps their bearers?
My own memories move now in
misted time, incomplete images
some vivid, some fading to ephemeral watercolor
senses of their essence –
did I know them?
Grampa gone when I was four,
Gramma’s mind stolen away by Alzheimer’s long before
her body surrendered the summer I was twenty
her will ever fierce (here, a clear felt memory sense, threaded
in my spirit, this I know)
How well did (do) I know them, my ancestors?

Not like Spirit
not like Earth and Sky
know them – now
but I remember them living
and rings in me the bell of truth
that a time comes when I
no more in this form here will be
to carry memory of my ancestors
my grandparents, my parents,
a time comes when
no one remains to remember me
and when the time comes
no one remains to remember me
or those whom I remembered
Earth, Sky, and wind will
remember
Spirit Creator will
remember
and beyond remember,
remain knowing

We continue
in the Earth and Sky
in wild wind and stillness
in trees and rivers
in dew and clouds
in sun and storm
We continue in the breath of every living one
and in the breath and body of the Earth
We continue
and so we remain
and in remaining are remembered
by Earth and Eternity
even when human mind and history
have forgotten or knew not
We continue