during today's last recess a child came up to me and told me this is the first day she has ever wished would not come to an end. at the end of the day they are putting down her dog. the sun is out for the first time in so long. I sit with her and we share a space of grief in advance, watching our shadows and willing them not to shift with the passage of time. please slow down. we are still holding on.
I do not tell her that I've just received a text from my mom asking if there's anything I want her to say to my grandmother for me because she is going to say goodbye and is leaving in an hour. I've known the end is near for several days now and it takes all of me to face anything other than this fact, but for the first time I am presented with an opportunity to put my thoughts into words, and I am unable to. so much of who I am was gifted to me in gentle hands and soft songs by my grandmother. how can you unbundle that and arrange it into a text message? would I be able to if I weren't bound to subtraction problems, recess games, and the perfect present tense? if I could, would she hear me?
instead I will whisper my last words to the wind.
three weeks ago I went to spain. after two cancelled europe trips and the looming threat of expiring flight credits, my friends (chiefly my dear Henri) performed a series of miracles which resulted in the acquisition of radiohead madrid tickets. Rebecca says she thinks this is evidence of how loved I am. I say I know, and mean it. my flights were delayed several times over and I ended up spending 8 hours each in the Denver and Munich airports on my way to Barcelona. in these moments of solitude I committed myself to moving slowly over the course of the week.
Frankie apologized a few days later for our late starts and aimless meanderings but I could not be more grateful. we move so slowly and yet we get so far. see so much.
on one such outing we are walking down from the Joan Miró museum (Holden's recommendation; a source of substantial reflection on visualizations of consciousness) and I don a green bunny balaclava I've just crocheted, debuting my new wig a few weeks before I end up needing it. I have never considered myself an artist but it is impossible for me to live without creating. Frankie asks about my creative origin story and it is, of course, one of my grandmother.
most Yakama ceremonies involve a "giveaway," wherein each person brings things to share with the community and places them in the center of the longhouse. then you go and take whatever you need or want. diapers and coloring pages and soap and pottery and coloring books and beautiful beautiful beads. as I write this I am sitting with a memory of one such giveaway, standing in a circle around the floor and waving to my grandfather across the room. I am five years old and this is a naming ceremony. I know that at a similar ceremony many years prior my grandmother was given her name, Huli Iwashisha. Wind Dancer.
I will whisper my last words to the wind.
in preparation for each naming ceremony, root feast, berry harvest, and medicine dance, I would go to stay with my grandmother. we let hours spill into days as we wove baskets, beaded earrings, sewed wing dresses, sculpted pottery, and crocheted medicine bags for the giveaway. she taught herself all of these skills and passed them on to me in this production line driven by love. for this reason I know that to make is a sacred act. I tell Frankie this, and he tells me he has baby fever.
most creative endeavors I pursue today were first gifted to me in moments like these. I say as much to my brother the next weekend when I step off the train in his college town and we discuss art and our relationship to it. this is the day our grandmother first goes unresponsive and is rushed to the emergency room, though we will not know for five days.
I find out on the day of Winston's car crash. they are okay but the car they grew up in is not. today they go and collect the last of their things from it and surrender it to the tow lot. as I read their text about this grief I remember the first time I felt the loss of my car when it was totaled in march. on my birthday I realized the family drum was in the trunk. this was the loss of a vehicle I had planned to own in some abstract "forever," but it was not true what I said about it being my only possession in life. please let me take that back.
today the car is gone but in my apartment the family drum remains. by some stroke of luck the trunk was the only portion of the car left unscathed. now together we move slowly, and yet we have gotten so far.
on sunday, one week after my grandmother's seizures began, Winston buzzes all of my hair off in their bathtub. as I'm crouched there, naked, my period begins. I had been waiting for it for three weeks, but it was waiting for this moment. I feel feminine in a way I haven't for a long time. I think about my grandmother when she was just a few years older than me, a parent of three, a PhD student, a woman of such grace and beauty and power. I think about how she kept her hair short too.
it has been so long since I have lost someone to time. the past ten years have been thoroughly imbued with grief, loss lining the walls of most memories, but never a loss I had the opportunity to prepare for. so many friends gone too soon, but none that I watched leave. now here I am, eyes open and burning as I hold back tears and hold on to this moment of grief in advance. I am given the opportunity to prepare and yet there is no way to. I am given the opportunity to say goodbye over text message and I am unable to. I am still holding on.
so I sit on the playground, watching my shadow. I reach up to wipe away the tears I've failed to hold back and feel the wind brush across my freshly buzzed hair. I feel the wind and speak to it and she is with me. we are dancing.
this is what I whisper.