About 4:20 PM yesterday, my father began his four-day journey along the western road.
I wasn’t there; Mom was with him. I’d left about 20 minutes earlier, finally headed to my other home for a few days. At about that time, I saw two adult golden eagles flying not quite in tandem by the side of the road; I thought it was odd, since you virtually never see eagles in that area, much less a pair, and that close to the road. Of course, I didn’t know then that Dad was gone, although I rather suspected it long before I got the message.
As has probably been clear over the years - of for no other reason, from the things I didn’t say - my father and I had, shall we say, a difficult relationship. Compounding this was the fact that his illness included a specialized form of dementia, so that for the last 3.5 years, carrying on any sort of conversation has been virtually impossible. There have been other factors at work, too, all underscored by the fact that I had a lot to forgive him for.
Mom had been saying for a couple of days that she thought this was it, so to speak - but we’d been there before, many times, and his illness was such that at any given time, he could be assumed to last ten more hours or ten more years. However, knowing that I was headed out of town yesterday morning, I knew I had to go see him, since I might not get another chance. (I did not get that chance with either of my sisters.) Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a chance in the first place, but duty trumps certain emotions. I wound up staying for several hours - not for any concrete reason that I could identify, but there turned out to be a reason in the end.
When I got there, his breathing was very labored (he was being treated for pneumonia) and, as usual, clonus had rendered his limbs spastic, so that he was contracted more or less into a fetal position. At one point, one of the nurses checked his feet and hands; all were a mottled purple, with the discoloration on his feet extending up over his knees in a nearly solid blue-black mass. When I spoke to him, his eyes parted a little; it was clear that he couldn’t see me, but he seemed to be tracking my voice.
Mom used my cell phone to call a few (very few) relatives; each time, she put the phone to his ear in the hope that he could hear. His face would spasm briefly, whether in recognition or from pain, it was impossible to tell. I retrieved my smudge kit from the car, filled a medicine bag with the four sacred substances, and tied the bag to his bed. (When I return, I’ll burn the bag’s contents.) Later, two nurses (wonderful women, both of them) turned off his oxygen so that I could smudge him. Because of the safety concerns, the tendril of smoke was virtually nonexistent, and I was afraid that nothing was happening. Then he breathed in the scent and suddenly gave what sounded something like a single hiccup - and his face, body, and breathing relaxed. He lay there on his back, the grimace gone from his face, the breathing rhythmic and no longer labored, the clonus gone from his body and his limbs at last stretched out, relaxed.
Mom had to run to the bank, so I took her place beside him. I apologized to him for not knowing the proper songs; I "sang" (that’s a gross overstatement) the only two I do know - and only in English, of course. They’re designed to release the person from the tethers of this life, so that s/he can begin the journey without worrying about what may or may not be left behind. I told him that I didn’t know whether it was his time - but if it was, I was releasing him, singing him into becoming a spirit (becoming one with Gitchi Manitou and the essential Mystery). And then I told him that we would all be okay. I told him for the first time about a particular person; that this person would take care of me; that we’d take care of Mom; that all the dogs would help. Occasionally, his eyelids would slit open slightly, and while there was no indication that he’d even heard me, I still think he was hearing my voice.
When Mom returned, I got ready to leave. Twenty minutes after that, he’d begun the walk. And when Mom called me to tell me, she also told me that - for the first time in months - his face was relaxed, unspasmed, and with normal color; the angry black mottling on his limbs had been replaced by healthy-looking tissue; and his hands and feet were warm. She saw him at the funeral home this morning (they can’t perform a cremation in the absence of a death certificate, which won’t be available until after the first of the week), and she told me that he looks more like himself than he has in a long time.
Talking with her yesterday evening, I apologized for the smudging, thinking that it may have hastened things faster than perhaps she would have wanted. She told me she was glad that I did it; that she thinks it made all the difference, first, in making him physically comfortable, and second, in releasing his spirit. I think she’s right. I also think she’s right that he hung on for three days because he couldn’t go until I released him. Not by way of forgiveness, precisely - from my end, it’s simply that everything that happened is now irrelevant. (And knowing him, if I’d used the word "forgiveness," it probably would’ve pissed him off into hanging on indefinitely from sheer rage.) But I do think he needed me to tell him it was okay to start his journey now.
This morning, while I was on the phone with Mom, a young eagle carrying a prairie dog in its talons flew across my path at roughly eye level, only mere yards from where I stood. A few moments later, an enormous swallowtail butterfly - easily a five-inch wingspan - raided the garden flowers for pollen while I stood three feet away. And all day yesterday and again today, birds have served as my escorts. As the person who owns this place said to me this morning, those were meant for me to see. And since then, I’ve been unusually serene.
The last few days have been . . . well, pretty brutal, obviously. And the confluence of certain events has the capacity to make them, taken as a whole, far, far worse than the sum of their parts. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Sometimes the universe has a way of forcing everything on you all at once - purely to get it all out of the way once and for all, so that you can change direction unencumbered by any remaining baggage of any sort. I think that’s what’s happened this week: Several disparate aspects of my life that have been weighing me down (in some cases, for decades) have now been taken out of my hands. I don’t have any choice but to start fresh. And it all happens to coincide with a particular one-year anniversary that has changed my life in countless and untold ways.
So for those of you who have been thinking good thoughts, thank you and bless you. And if anyone feels the need to "do something," Parkinson’s research efforts need help. So do domestic violence programs for Native American populations.
I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll do here over the next couple of days; my brain is still sorting things out a bit. For those of you who’ve already left comments, I will get to those. And shortly, I anticipate having considerably more time and a considerably more regular schedule, allowing me to immerse myself in writing here, and in developing Debwe. Before I leave you this evening, I’ll share one of today’s gifts from the universe - no chance at getting a shot of the eagle, but I did get one of the butterfly:
The shot’s not terribly in focus, but believe me, it was a stunner.
Love to you all -
~ L
