Twenty-Three October 1972–August 1973 #3
It was a closed casket, pine and simple, flowers and medicines draped over the top.
I didn’t get to see his face, to know that he was really in there.
For a brief time I convinced myself that he wasn’t in there, that someday he would show up at the door and tell me there’d been a mistake, that it wasn’t really him who died.
But deep down I knew there was no mistake.
I would never feel his hand on top of mine again, we would never eat in the diner together, would never have that future he was so excited about.
There was a reception at his parents’ house afterward.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, but in the end I was glad I did.
I’d left the funeral early with John’s aunt, who was going to prepare the food for the evening.
In my purse, I held John’s braid. The sweetgrass hadn’t even had time to fully dry.
As she laid out the food and put water on for tea, I lit the wood stove in the corner and gently placed his braid inside.
I watched as the flames consumed it and the scent of sweetgrass overwhelmed the scent of burned hair.
It was a private ceremony, and while I don’t know if this is what he would have wanted, I knew it was something I had to do, in his home, surrounded by everything he knew and everyone who loved him.
When people began to arrive from the graveside service, they were heartened by the scent of medicine and I knew John was somehow in the room.
The sombre tone of the day seemed to lift, if only a little.
There is healing in laughter. I think it must be cellular, the repairing of a body wounded by grief.
Everyone shared stories of John, and as the evening progressed, someone brought out a guitar and started playing his favourite songs.
Everyone sang along. A lot of the older folks didn’t know the words and just hummed along. He would have loved it.
There was so much food and drink, and it was the first time I’d ever tasted whiskey. John’s father came over to me, two glasses in his hand with a golden liquid and a few ice cubes.
“A drink to my son.” He handed me a glass.
I took a sniff and scrunched up my nose.
“The more you drink of it, the better it tastes.” He laughed, then clinked his glass with mine. I swallowed it quickly, my eyes watering, my throat burning.
“To John,” I said, and we clinked again. I was expecting Kiju to say something about the whiskey, but she didn’t. She just drank her tea and watched me from afar.
The next morning was hard. My head throbbed. I could smell eggs cooking in Sally’s kitchen, and I was almost sick to my stomach.
“Do you feel like you got hit by a train?” Big Ben said as I walked into the kitchen, hand on my head.
I nodded.
“Whiskey will do that to you,” he said, as he handed me two small pills.
“This is the only time I’m going to go easy on you when you’ve had too much to drink,” Kiju said as she brought me a glass of water.
The train ride home was rough. The lurching made anything that was still in my stomach churn. I lay with my head against the cold window, my eyes closed the entire ride. When I got home, I went right to bed. Kiju came in to check on me before she went to sleep.
“Everything is gone,” I whispered.
“Oh sweetheart, not everything. You lost a bit of yourself in that boy. I know that.” She sat on the edge of my bed, gathering her thoughts.
“It’s not something you will ever get back, but it’s also not something that you should mourn for the rest of your life.
I know that’s hard to understand right now, but all I can say is that you need to be careful with the rest of your heart. ”
For a while, I was angry with him, for breaking his promise to me, leaving me alone.
Kiju said that grief sometimes manifests as anger.
And sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
Instead of letting me wallow in grief, instead of letting me give up on the life I had anticipated, she got me out of bed every morning, she sent me to feed the chickens, she sent me back to school.
She let me cry but let me know when “enough was enough.” And eventually, things started to brighten again.
The sky was still blue as I threw chicken feed on the ground out back of the house.
The birds still sang, returning to our yard after the worst winter I’d known.
The school still planned for a graduation, one in which I would walk across the stage, somehow older than my classmates.
A letter arrived, telling me that I was accepted into nursing school with a scholarship.
Summer still required work—tending to the garden, making strawberry and blueberry jams, drying herbs for teas.
Then, on a dreadfully hot day in late August, Big Ben packed my belongings on the back of a new pickup truck and drove me to my school residence in the city.
As we pulled out of the driveway, Kiju stood on the stoop, pretending she wasn’t crying.
As I looked across the road to the field that used to host the apple pickers, and the head of the new trail created by the town, I could see the very tip of the birthing tree, its leaves glittering yellow-green against the blue sky.