Before there was time and form, there was water, only water. Creator added dimension when He emerged from the original essence. The sky came into being, and the world was water and air. The first sound that began existence was from that moment; it sounded like the gentle splash of water lapping onto earth.

The Creator is everything and incomprehensible. After the beginning, Earth Doctor (“First Born”) arrived. Eventually, Earth Doctor rubbed the dirt and grease from his chest to start building the Earth. He enlisted the ants (“Pre-born”?) and made the “Greasewood” (creosote) to help him collect and create more land.

All was still in darkness, so Earth Doctor took some water and froze it into a disk. Earth Doctor then squeezed the disk until it ignited into the hottest fire and threw it into the sky. It kept falling back to him when he threw it - first into the north, then into the west, and then into the south. When he finally threw it the fourth time far into the east, it tried to fall back yet again but stayed aloft and rolled across the sky into the west. Darkness fell, but the Sun kept moving and returned in the morning.

With the light of day, Earth Doctor used the “shadow of his eye” to create another life for company and to help with the work he had started. Buzzard was “Second Born” and immediately went to work helping Earth Doctor fashion the earth. When the sun went down everyday, though, Buzzard was completely blind and was completely unable to complete any kind of task at all.

To alleviate the darkness of night, Earth Doctor took more water and froze another disk. The heat from the sun could get uncomfortable, so Earth Doctor kept the Moon cool and threw it into the sky. Again, he threw, this time the Moon and this time in a different order, starting in the south, then east, then north. On the fourth throw, the Sun was setting, and Earth Doctor did not want the Sun and Moon to end up always being in the same part of the sky, so He threw the Moon hard to the west to beat the approaching night. The Moon stayed in the sky but was attracted to the Sun, so she followed him in the sky, making good use of Earth Doctor’s powerful throw, but the throw was so great that the Moon was pushed fast through the sky and even past the Sun on her daily course.

The Sun and Moon were attracted to one another, however, and met once a month. They had a child - Coyote. Coyote joined Earth Doctor and Buzzard in the beginning of things, and it was Coyote, born of love between beings, rather than Earth Doctor’s magic, that recognized time and its consequences. What begins will ultimately end. (I like to think Coyote’s recognition of the finite is also the reason he does so much of what he does. Why be bored when we can have fun? Why be sad if we can find happiness? Why waste our time in despair when we can embrace hope?)

Once the hard work of initial earthly creation and the interplay of personalities was established, another arrived from the north. Se’ehe insisted on being called “Elder Brother” even though he was apparently younger than everyone else then alive, and he insisted on extra respect even though the most difficult work was already complete. (Personally, I feel Elder Brother is Creator who incarnated after seeing his creations successfully pass the trials of starting the world.)

From this cast of characters, Elder Brother Earth Doctor, the Ants, Creosote, Buzzard, and Coyote, all that we know, and can know, came to be.

However, before existence became a dramatic, often crushing, ideally full of joy, and sometimes illuminating state of being, there was water - the source of all life - and water will be there in the “Land Before the Sunrise” where the Sun and Moon found and elevated love, and where our eternal souls go when our earthly bodies finally fail.

My homeland is a plain yet vexing land - spartan at best, occasionally sublime, and simply punishing at worst.

My dad was born in what is now Poland and grew up in the Rhine valley of West Germany. He grew up as a boy in Köln and apprenticed as a pastry chef in Düsseldorf. When he was 21, he caught “wanderlust” and decided to leave his home and country. The United States of 1965 was my dad’s preferred destination, but he felt his English was inadequate. However, my dad apparently felt his French was passable, so he emigrated to Montreal and got work there at a hotel restaurant. Eventually, he made his way over into the Rocky Mountain regions of Canada working in the burgeoning ski industry and improving his English.

I sometimes joke about how much some Germans love “Native American” culture and point out that I am, from a very logical perspective, the practical end of that “love” (at least in the case of my father). My dad became quite good friends with the Blackfoot Confederacy tribes in the Calgary area and was likely inclined to settle down there, but then, by chance, my dad made contact with my mom as a pen pal.

My dad had sent letters inquiring about various tribes in North America. His tactic for the U.S. was to send letters to Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Agency Superintendents requesting information of the local tribes they served. He sent a letter to the Salt River Agency, and the superintendent passed the letter on to my mom who was working there as a 19 year-old secretary to help her mom and family as her dad, my grandfather, had passed away just over a year prior. My mom responded in writing to my dad on behalf of the BIA and the Salt River tribe, and a relationship began.

In 1968, my mom and dad were married in Sacaton, Arizona on the Gila River Indian Reservation. In 1971, their oldest child (me) was born. My only other sibling, my brother, was born in 1973. We all initially lived in my grandfather’s childhood adobe in Salt River, but eventually moved to the Gila River reservation to be closer to my grandmother and young aunts.

My dad loved his wife and immediate and extended American family, but he was not as fond of the harsh climate of the Salt and Gila River valleys of the Sonoran Desert. Simply put, it was just too damn hot for him sometimes. Hell, I grew up here, and it’s too damn hot for me - every single year - but we deal with it.

Arizona is a blessed state in that one can find every climatic zone here. In a matter of hours, one can travel from the hot, low desert to the forgivingly cooler (maybe 40 to 50 degrees cooler) mountains. Unfortunately, work for a pastry chef, specifically with ski resort experience, was not abundant in southern Arizona in the 1970’s, so an extra, available vehicle for family excursions to the north was not realistic, and escapes out of the heat were not as common as I’m sure my dad would have liked.

Still, my mom and especially my dad made every effort to ensure at least an annual trip to the Grand Canyon in the summer. We would take the same route up to Flagstaff, get hamburgers at Bun Huggers, drive up Humphreys Street to Route 180, pass (PASS - always to the chagrin of my brother and me) by Bedrock City, then camp outside Tusayan for a night or two.

My grandmother was a registered nurse, trained by the Native American nurse instruction program developed in Ganado, Arizona during World War II. Her usual employment was at the Arizona State Prison in Florence - only about 30 minutes from Sacaton. Around the time I was six, however, my grandmother was offered a position at the hospital in Prescott. It was not as high in elevation as Flagstaff, but it was still much cooler than the southern deserts.

My grandma was also my parents’ “go to” babysitter for my brother and me, so my brother and I got to travel to Prescott relatively frequently to stay with my grandmother on weekends and the occasional school break. (I lost my first tooth watching “The Little Drummer Boy” at my grandma’s house in Prescott during Christmas Vacation.)

On all these trips north, whether it was with my parents or with my grandmother, we would always travel through or get back onto the I-17 at Cordes Junction on the southern return home. Sunset Point is a relatively historic rest stop on the routes connecting Phoenix and points south with points north and sits just above the Black Canyon and the desert Saguaros. My dad liked to stop there to get one last breath of cool(ish) air before braving the heat again, and my grandmother just liked to ensure my brother and I got a relatively relaxed bathroom break before she had to confront the often overheated craziness of Phoenix traffic.

(That’s my dad and me at Sunset Point in the early summer of 1976.)

I grew up with evaporative (“swamp”) cooling in our houses, and that type of cooling is only really effective until the higher humidity of July and August monsoons arrive. Nowadays, I would die without central air conditioning.

Yesterday, I participated in an electric vehicle “Ride and Drive” in Flagstaff. My wife has had recent, significant losses in her family, and my son prefers the air conditioned comfort of “Admin Abuse” in his Roblox game at our home over sitting in a car for hours traveling to and from Flagstaff and then being bored while I let strangers drive my car. Consequently, I made yesterday’s trip by myself.

The event was basically a bust as we got absolutely drenched with rain and even, at one point, had to shelter in place in our rubber tire insulated vehicles due to the threat of lightning strikes, but it was a good reunion of fine and fun folks - and we got pizza!

The idea of Flagstaff rather than the Phoenix metro area in mid-July sounded like a great idea when we developed it, and though things did not turn out exactly as intended, the experience was still enjoyable and even renewing. The summer rains mark the beginning of the O’odham New Year, and the Hopi’s see those annual rains the same way.

A few weeks after the summer solstice, the Hopi believe the Kachinas return home to the 12,000 foot San Francisco Peaks next to modern Flagstaff where they will stay until the winter solstice. As part of their return home, the Kachinas bless us all with life-giving rains. I should have remembered that when the date for our event was originally proposed as it fell almost exactly within that timeframe of likely Kachina rain.

Because I brought neither a jacket nor an umbrella, I was soaked at times, but it was cleansing and rejuvenating. The summer baptism and the fellowship of friends produced peace and joy. I felt no disappointment from anyone.

Most of my fellows had made arrangements to spend the night before and the night after our event in the cool, forested relief of Flagstaff. As my family remained home, I had opted to make it a day trip. I bid farewell to my friends, charged my car at Rivian charger at Bashas’ (where I also unexpectedly, and gratefully, found a raven’s primary wing feather fall right before me), and made the run downhill back to the desert.

I stopped for a burger at “Junk Food Junction” in Camp Verde and was finished eating by the time I approached the Sunset Point rest area. My old bladder and my desire to dispose of the lingering scent of fry grease as best I could led me to make a stop that I haven’t made in a long time.

It was later in the afternoon, and the clouds between the higher and lower elevations were mingling and breaking as the sun was on its daily descent. The air was markedly cool from what turned out to be statewide rains and, along with my mind, clear and clean. I recalled my parents and grandparents and their love and comfort and care. As I sat back in my car, I saw a young family park and break out of their van. Two young boys led the charge out of containment and ran to the scenic ledge overlooking the Bumblebee area and, more distantly, the gold-bearing Bradshaw Mountains that really catalyzed the settlement of Europeans in Arizona.

I traveled on home - happy and content. It was another day of blessings.

Tom Ryan mentioned my request for the blessings of the ancestors while we were meeting. In truth, I was also recognizing the passing of my wife’s aunt the very day before and making two requests - one for Pam to enjoy the next few days, in spirit, with her loved ones and then to start her journey up and east, and two, for the ancestors to welcome Pam and help guide her on her long trip to the “Land Before the Sunrise”.

In our tradition, our mothers’ sisters are considered our “Little Mothers”. That’s what Pam was to my wife, and yesterday, we placed Pam’s earthly remains to rest.

Funerals are naturally sad times, but as I have accumulated more and more experiences with them, I tend to find moments of pleasant recollection remembering other loved ones now gone and their bodies’ final mornings on Earth in the sacred and beautiful Memorial Hall our tribe ensured was erected and maintained with love and immeasurable respect.

Sometimes, the grieving, maybe in an effort to supplant grief, become obsessed with the “perfection” of the final farewell, but I’ve learned that as long as the key components are taken care of, everything else will appropriately and organically develop, and sometimes transient instants of perfect radiance reveal themselves. There were many such instances yesterday and the day before, but will personally always remember the way the sun shone in through the north alcove windows onto Pam’s face yesterday. Only the rising sun at that specific time at this specific time of year could come through those windows at that exact angle to illuminate the space of Memorial Hall as it did just then. Fortune and Fate conspired, as they usually do, to create splendor.

Pam’s farewell caught and celebrated love and peace - just as a proper funeral should. So many folks came, and they all shared tears and laughter, memories and music, and food.

As I recalled at my father-in-law’s funeral just a few weeks ago, I feel I learned the greatest lesson in all of my Religion college major coursework in the first ten minutes of Religion 1. The professor asked the class what we felt made a community. More often than not, most will answer a commonality of moral or religious belief, but the professor contended that community was NOT defined by religious belief but was rather defined by whom groups of people simply ate with. We share our meals with those we love, those we cherish, and with those we care for - everything else, often convoluted and sometimes unnecessary, is built upon the most basic of human existence.

Food was abundant at Pam’s funeral, and my wife was at a bit of a loss as what to prepare at first but then she remembered the white tepary beans I was going to give Tom Ryan but opted not to. Tepary beans are a traditional food of our tribe, and knowing Tom’s dietary preferences, I thought a gift of my favorite “baví”, white teparies, would have been a nice addition to his acceptable menu. Ultimately, I decided that rather than give Tom a two-pound bulky package of beans, I would mail him a package when he was back in Massachusetts as they make a wonderful cold-weather meal.

My wife cleaned and soaked her beans then set them to cook overnight, but teparies are notoriously slow-cooking, and she decided to let them cook on through the proper burial, and we would come home and pick them up just before the final meal before friends and family would again go their own ways.

On the road home to get the cooked beans, my wife asked if I was alright. She wasn’t quite sure if I was sad or tired or both. I told her I was just thinking. I was thinking about her dad’s recent funeral and my dad’s funeral that also occurred in early July and my mom’s funeral that occurred in a January so wet (though rains during a funeral are considered a true blessing by our tribe) that the cemetery crew was uncertain if she could be safely interred in the morning. I told my wife I was also thinking of my grandmother’s funeral and of a story she would tell me of death.

One of the items I DID give Tom was a splinter of Saguaro rib, and tied to it was a silver pendant with our “Man in the Maze” symbol on it. I told Tom how the alcove at the very end of the “maze” of life’s twists and turns represents a moment when we may recall our life before moving on, but my grandmother told me that the moment is also an opportunity for Creator to welcome us and judge the gift of life He gave us and what we made of it.

My grandmother would use the example of a gifted axe. Say we gave a friend a new axe and years later we asked him if he still had that gift. It could be possible that the friend brings out the axe still perfect and essentially new and unused. The friend may have appreciated the gift but did not want to change or damage it. That’s a fine sentiment, but we gift things according to need. My grandmother told me she would like to see an axe that was maybe worse for wear - maybe the handle had broken and was replaced, maybe the blade was dulled or sharpened so often it had actually been reduced in size, maybe there was lost paint or spots of rust - but was used. She was taught, and taught me, that’s what Creator liked to see at that moment of assessment - a life that may not have always been perfect but was lived - a full and meaningful use of his gift to us.

A new morning, another new day, has arrived. Human paths proceed in uncountable different directions, sometimes crossing, oftentimes not, and some now travel in realms and ways we cannot understand for now. The light of certain friends and family may not share the sun and earth with us today, but we are here - with the undying human love we all create and nurture and pass on and which we may always remember and find comfort in.

“Oh, they’re not related to us by blood - just by love.”

A man, one I have called friend and now know as a brother, has been making annual roadtrips around the country and, because he has been ensnared by the sentinels of the Sonoran Desert, the Saguaro, he has made a recent, regular effort to visit my small piece of the world.

I was born and raised among the Saguaro. The ancient and imposing (and just damn tough) cacti are considered a “keystone species” of, and are endemic to, the Sonoran Desert. As a culture, it is the belief of the O’odham that the Saguaro cacti are the embodiment of our ancestors, and wherever they stand is our land - our O’odham Jeved. The O’odham, the Sonoran Desert, and the Saguaro are all inextricably one.

The desert is a hard place, but life, as always, makes its way, and the infinite dance of life, as always, makes unimaginable magic. It is impossible to stand among the Saguaro and not feel the centuries of struggle and success they have witnessed and experienced. Hardship is inevitable; they have known it, they have endured it, and they assure us that struggle is natural, passing, and defeatable through understanding, patience, and will. They have also stood witness to 10,000 sunrises and inspire us to believe in 10,000 more.

My friend Tom Ryan is a writer from New England - a region quite nearly the opposite of all that characterizes the Sonoran Desert, but New England can be just as hard - freezing rather than burning and flooding rather than desiccating. For me, the novelty of those differences was alluring to me, and I decided to attend four years of college there. Eventually, and quite easily too, novelty turned to expectation then to appreciation and then to love. I am forever grateful to have experienced and lived in New England (though as I told Tom, after that first winter, my love for, and commitment to return home to the Sonoran Desert was unquestioned.)

Tom and I became friends through years of writing and sharing experiences, opinions, and feelings, but we never met in-person until a few days ago. I was surprised (though, honestly, not as much as I think I should have been) when Tom reached out to me to let me know he was going to be stopping in Scottsdale (and, in fact, staying at a hotel built on my tribe’s reservation lands) on his 2026 Coddiwomple and was open to meeting.

The final arrangement of logistics to bring us together fell together remarkably easy, and though I am reluctant to claim any understanding whatsoever of the identity or meaning of God, I have faith in the game of balance Providence plays and am inclined to attribute the final perfect conditions under which Tom and I met to divine influence.

The early morning on the last day of June, 2026 was ideal for the Sonoran Desert. When we reached where I had invited Tom to, the Red Mountain and Salt and Verde River natural preserve area of my tribe’s reservation, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, it was 65 degrees as the sun rose higher into a cloudless sky. (I had actually somewhat hoped we might meet in the afternoon of a hot day with a windy, dusty, and lightning filled rainstorm approaching - but predicting monsoon storms is precisely like trying to predict exactly when and where bubbles will form in boiling water.)

Our understanding of one another as men and humans was effortless. I have experienced seeing friends I have not seen in years and feeling as if it had maybe only been a day since our last meeting. I felt the same way with Tom even though we had never even ever met, face to face, before.

Some of my original intended plans changed. I realized I should have met Tom earlier - as even on the mildest of June days, the temperatures rise rapidly in the desert summer, and I did not want to expose us to any unnecessary level of danger, so I purposely limited the distance up the side of Red Mountain that we walked, but the unforeseen also contributed. Tom’s two canine companions took to the desert like ducks to water - in the case of Emily, quite literally.

I knew, but forgot, that Emily loved being in water, so I should have anticipated Emily’s reaction to the side channel of a side channel of the flowing Salt River to which I brought Tom, Sam, and Emily.

As a natural preserve area, access to the rivers is not the easiest. Roads are dirt, often extremely sandy, and usually a bit removed from the rivers’ courses. Additionally, the routes of the rivers this close to the foot of Red Mountain are often defined by steep, rocky areas. I chose to walk with Tom and Sam and Emily down to a slow-moving side channel of the Salt River covered in mesquite with shallow waters accessed by a path of deep silt. As soon as we reached the water’s edge, and I was assessing the lay of the land following recent years’ flooding, I saw a flash of black out of the corner of my eye then heard a splash.

I knew it wasn’t a wild horse (which are known to enter the river here) as the splash was relatively small, and for a second I thought it might have been an otter or even a chuckwalla lizard, but then I saw Emily happily swimming in the Salt River. That moment was, simultaneously, my most concerning and most joyful of the morning (and maybe this year so far) - to see a friend from a foreign land embracing a moment of joy at a desert oasis she had never been to before but that has brought relief and joy to locals for centuries.

It was a morning of comfort and trust and sharing. Reservation of thought and feeling abandoned us, and persons were laid bare. I was granted the luxury of hearing a story-teller create in real time, and I, in turn, held little back in sharing my knowledge, perceptions, and dreams.

At one point, Tom asked me the simple question, “Are you happy?” Tom knew I had experienced great struggle, pain, and loss in my life over the last few years, but I believe he also knew that I always endeavor to look up and out and to appreciate the many blessings I also receive every day. My response to him was an immediate and unquestioned, “yes, absolutely”. However, I did reflect on the question and answer. I am, without any doubt, happy. I exist in a position of obligation but also privilege - and also in a place of infinite love. I have realized a life of peace out of turmoil and one of success out of challenge, and it is all just that - realization - brought about by personal action but also by simple recognition. I am faithful that life is as it should be; I open my eyes, and my soul, to the beauty of a mysterious and magnificent world, and I am grateful for friends - for family - like Tom, that give me that occasional push to remember and to appreciate.

Too soon, however, Tom, Sam, and Emily had to return to the road and leave my home behind, but that’s alright. Every day is another day, and every day renews the promise of life - the essential goodness of the universe - even if that promise rests on a far reaching curve. Tom and I shall share more between us, and if it is meant to be, Tom and I will even meet in-person again.

All things, always, happen as and when they should.

The O’odham name for June is Hașañ Baidag Mașad - Saguaro Fruit Month.

There were generally 13 “months” in the year traditionally - aligning with the lunar cycle, but the annual calendar was generously flexible, and months were general periods rather than defined collections of specific days. Also, the annual calendar was “reset” every year with dramatic rise in temperatures, the desiccation and lost color of the spring flowers and grasses, the ripening of the Saguaro Fruit, and finally, the arrival of the sometimes violent and frightening yet critical and life-sustaining summer rains that return this time of year. The O’odham “New Year” happens in June.

Within my family, however, June has also become a month of commemorating births and, sadly, deaths. My dad was born the day before D-Day in Gdansk, Poland (then called Danzig in Nazi Germany), my wife has a birthday, and my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law have birthdays. However, my dad also passed away in June of 2013, my aunt, my mom’s sister - and for whom I was a caregiver - passed away in June as well (she was actually taken off life support on the fourth of June but held on until just past midnight of June fifth - I’m fairly certain just to make one final gesture to her brother-in-law, my dad, with whom she never really got along), and now my father-in-law, five times married and father to eight children, one of whom is my beloved wife, will be remembered for his departure in June.

June can be a simply hard month in O’odham Jeved - the Sonoran Desert. Water becomes more scarce, crops collected from the prior year are low, edible plants are dying, and temperatures can soar to genuinely debilitating highs, but the same hot temperatures also create a change in wind patterns and foster a sort of vacuum to funnel atmospheric moisture from the oceans into the desert.

The local flora have adapted to the weather patterns, and the O’odham developed certain crops out of rougher, naturally occurring plants. The most significant staple of the traditional O’odham diet is the Tepary Bean - a “superfood” high in protein, low on the glycemic index, extremely nutritious, and existent in various shapes and sizes - though all descended from the original “Coyote” bean (called that because when gathered, the original beans were “tricky”, like Coyote, and were in size and appearance almost identical to the tiny desert pebbles, just slightly larger than grains of sand - if one dropped those seeds and tried to pick them up to cook, one might as well stew a pot of desert soil - something Coyote would undoubtedly laugh at). The quick growing Tepary Beans naturally germinated with the annual arrival of the summer rains, so O’odham would plant their fields with their developed strains of the beans at that same time every year.

The desert also provides a high-sugar, sweet treat with cactus fruit. Many of the smaller species of cactus have fruit that ripens a little earlier in the year, but the slow-growing, deliberate Saguaro possesses fruit that does not fully ripen until right around the Summer Solstice and, maybe coincidentally, maybe not, with the return of the summer monsoons.

Now, just as a quick aside, the common belief is that alcohol consumption did not exist in the Americas until after the arrival of the Europeans, but it’s been proven that a few cultural groups developed alcoholic beverages in the “New World” centuries ago. The O’odham were one. We took the acidic, high-sugar fruit of the Saguaro and utilized it - for etching jewelry, to make jams and dried snacks, but also to create a (foul-tasting, to be quite honest) wine to get “beautifully drunk”. To become intoxicated from Saguaro fruit wine was ceremonial with the intent being to get drunk enough to vomit and bring moisture to the earth - all to invite, welcome, and celebrate the summer rains that refresh the rivers and foster the growth of food.

This June, I was asked to prepare and read the eulogy at my father-in-law’s funeral. I relished the gathering of daughters and sisters prior to the funeral to try and recollect what they could of their loved one’s life. I learned new things about the man I had known for nearly a third of my life - like the fact that his legs were consistently voted as the “sexiest” on the Salt River Rez during the 1970’s (no doubt one of the reasons he was married five times), and I was able to, I hope, condense and share the breadth of a life well lived. Wrapping up the eulogy, though, I recalled my personal experience of going back to my father-in-law’s room just a minute or so after he passed. I did not realize, or even really anticipate, he had left, but as I approached, I knew, without word, that he had. It was a mournful moment, but it was also one of the most beautiful sights I have ever felt and seen.

My father-in-law had six daughters, a couple additional, adopted daughters, and numerous granddaughters and great-granddaughters. In his final moments, he was surrounded by the pure love filling his room from eight of his daughters and granddaughters. There were some tears but no noise, no wailing, no tragic confusing chatter - only peaceful acceptance of the passing moment. As I told those gathered at the funeral, may we all be so lucky to leave this world with such love and calm and comfort.

As I write this, another of my wife’s relatives, one of her aunts (her mom’s sister) is in intensive care at a nearby hospital, and we may very well be confronted with yet another memorial date in June, but I am strangely (or not) rejuvenated.

As the heat, and seeming threat, of June intensified, in my youth, I used to gird myself to simply endure. As I’ve matured, I’ve had to directly face and deal with difficult circumstances - physically, psychologically, rationally, and emotionally - that had to be actively dealt with to fulfill my obligations. I have been tested, and I have learned. Life may be difficult, even ended here and now, in the harsh time of the Saguaro fruit, but when all seems just about to end, we are reminded, and we witness, that life is not a finite affair; the extent of life goes beyond our comprehension AND moves cyclically, and all is ultimately and inevitably renewed and reborn.

I guess I should never take the owls too lightly.

The day after I posted my piece on the owls as Messengers, my father-in-law was hospitalized. Before the week was over, he had passed.

My father-in-law’s passing was not entirely unforeseen; he had been in declining health for a bit, and yet while the passing of a loved one is never easy, when the final moment came, he was in a peaceful situation - one I could only dream of having when my time comes.

My 78 year old father-in-law had five wives, seven children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. He had five biological daughters but also a few other “adopted” daughters as well.

When I last saw him, it was by chance just after he had moved on. I had walked back to his room in the ICU and as I approached the entrance, I saw eight of his daughters and granddaughters gathered around him, clearly grieving but also peaceful and calm. It was a scene of absolute beauty and love.

Shortly after my father-in-law’s passing, I posted a note here. In our tradition, the spirits of the deceased are granted four full days to linger and interact with their friends and family, but then they are to be reminded to move on to the ancestors in the land beyond the rising sun lest they get lost. The command should be given by an elder of the tribe, but their are few left who remember and practice that tradition, so I threw out the statement here for purposes of respect and protocol.

In addition to the passing of my father-in-law, my 36 year old sister-in-law was recently diagnosed with leukemia. Over the last couple years, she’s also had to fight diabetes, infections, kidney failure, cancer in her uterus, and brain surgery to clean and clear a brain bleed. She’s tired and decided not to fight the leukemia.

On the evening of the day following the fourth full day of my father-in-law’s passing, the family gathered at the house of my wife’s aunt (also an old friend of mine as we have dealt with various tribal political situations together over the years) who happens to be the closest thing to a medicine woman we have left in our part of O’odham Jeved. As the sun was just about to set, my wife’s aunt gathered everyone and said a blessing for her niece then, unrequested yet unsurprisingly, she also said a blessing for my father-in-law and asked him to start his safe, purposeful, and loving journey to the ancestors.

Everything happens as it should.

When we got home after visiting my wife’s aunt, my son yelled, “an owl!” We both saw one float down from above us onto a nearby tree branch. There was no sound, no hooting (from which we are to draw warning) - just the silhouette of a friendly owl in front of the very last light of that day.

Today we begin the final commitment of my father-in-law’s earthly remains, and the signs continue.

Last night, just before dinner, my son, again, as he was about to sit to eat, stopped in his tracks and said, once again - this time quietly, “an owl.” Behind my wife, not more than 20 feet away, sat an owl, fully unobstructed in view, between two of our backyard trees. His body was facing east, but as owls do, he had his head turned 180 degrees around and was looking at us. The sun was going down, and his yellow eyes were illuminated. He blinked, turned his head nearly 360 degrees clockwise, looked at us, blinked again, then turned his head forward and flew off to the east - toward the home of the Sun and the Land Before the Sunrise.

When I was young, maybe six years old, I saw my grandmother seize a broom and rather violently chase away an owl that had momentarily landed on the end of our clothesline. She was clearly agitated and driven to banish that owl away from her presence. I had never seen my grandmother react so actively and quickly.

I asked one of my aunts why Grandma acted like that, and she told me, for my first time, of the Owl and its role as a messenger - often of death. The belief is that if one hears an owl hoot at least three times on three consecutive nights then something is going to happen to someone in the household. My grandmother experienced an owl hooting three times for three nights just before my grandfather died, and since then she hated the presence of owls and made sure to send them away if she ever saw one.

I thought that was an interesting belief and story, but I never had any significant personal dealings with owls until I was older. Once, while my family hosted a dinner for a group of my college friends while we were on Spring Break, a pure white Great Horned Owl flew just a few feet over our heads toward the elder singer then off into the night. She was beautiful and silent.

Even more years later, my parents, my mom’s sisters (my aunts), and my uncle (one of my aunt’s husband) were all older and living together in my mom’s house. I would help with keeping the yard maintained and feeding the animals. Aside from that Spring Break dinner, I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing an owl in the wild. One night while feeding the dogs on the northern end of the homesite, I heard what I assumed was owl hooting. It hooted, over the course of a few minutes, three times. I thought it was ominous, but not overwhelmingly threatening. However, the next night and the night after that, I heard the same hooting. That’s when I became concerned.

Two days later, yet without hearing any owls again, my mom called to tell me my uncle had passed away in my old bedroom where he had been staying. I knew I had heard from the Messenger.

Messengers visited me in the exact same fashion twice more within three years after my uncle’s passing. Three months after my uncle, my mom passed. Thirty-six months after my uncle, my dad passed. It would be six years after my dad’s departure that I would hear from the Owl again.

Six years after my dad moved on, I was again feeding the dogs at my mom’s house, which was now only occupied by my two elderly aunts, when three quick hoots came out of the old, tall eucalyptus tree next to my Grandma Ruth’s (my grandfather Lawrence’s sister’s house). Again, I heard the hoots at dusk the following two days then nothing, but then one of my aunts was admitted into the hospital with an infection that turned septic. Within a week of hearing the owl’s hoots, my eldest aunt had to make the decision to end life-support for her baby sister.

Not long after my aunt’s death, my last living aunt mysteriously became totally paralyzed in her legs and lost most of her ability to move her arms. She needed way more constant help than I was able to provide, and she ended up moving into a skilled nursing group home. Right around the same time, my aunt moved out of my mom’s house, my own immediate family and I moved to a new house next to an older city park on the edge of the reservation. The park with its proximity to the open land of the Rez, well watered grounds and tall, mature trees was a refuge for wildlife. A couple years after moving in, first one and then a pair of owls settled into the same neighborhood. At first, when we first heard the hooting, my wife and I joked about “Desperado”, as we called him, making noisy calls every night in pursuit of a mate, but I was wary of the nightly songs.

Over the years we’ve lived next to the park, we’ve heard owl hoots most nights now, and there have been a good number of deaths - including that of my aunt in the group home - but there have also been just challenging circumstances as well as good moments.

See, as my grandmother, my mom, my aunts, and all my elder teachers related, while the owl may be offer warnings of adversity and even death, it is also ultimately only a messenger - and sometimes the messages may, as well, be good.

Living with the owls so close, I learned to take the time to really “listen” to them - rather than just hear hoots, I allowed the feel of the air and the earth mix with the weight and feel of the resonant music made by the owls to give me an intuitive understanding of what may be confronting me. I came to understand the owls are simply messengers and may be useful complements to the normal up and down experience of life.

I have been fortunate to become friendly and understanding of the Messenger. While I do believe the prophecy of death is a true possibility, I understand that death is also just an inevitable cycle in life - as is birth and fruitful and blessed growth.

Desperado did find a companion, and the pair have had a number of young ones over the last few years. My avian friends even find our home welcoming enough that the parents have decided it’s the best location to teach their young ones to fly. It’s somewhat surreal to witness, given our traditional beliefs, but it is also beautiful to see the owl family congregate around us as they engage, as we all do, in living well with the time we are given.

When I started considering writing here, it was for three reasons. Firstly, I’ve always simply enjoyed writing. Secondly, I feel my experience as person with a German immigrant father, a Native American mother, and a life growing up on Native American reservations (along with the occasional residence in New England) during that distinctive transitional period from the “analog” post-Boomer 60’s into the modern, wholly digital “Age of Information” might be interesting to some. Finally, having embraced the pursuit and retention of knowledge of my family’s and tribe’s histories, and as my son is the heir to a shrunken and depleted kinship group, I was compelled to record thoughts and events for the sake of sharing what fewer and fewer now remember.

My son is, technically, my legally “adopted” son, but he is my son in every way that truly matters, and though we are adamantly bonded by love, we are, ultimately, also related by “blood”. My son’s biological grandmother is my first cousin; the common ancestor my son and I share is his great, great grandfather and my grandfather. Memorial Day, and its connection to the genuine patriotism, more often than not, practiced by the members of our military, invoked thought of my grandfather (who I, sadly, never met in this life), so I felt it appropriate to write today.

My grandfather was Lawrence Menson. Lawrence was Akimel O’odham from the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and married my grandmother, Dorothy Walker Menson (also Akimel O’odham but from the Gila River Indian Community), just after returning from World War II. I always like to point out that my grandfather and all of his cousins, brothers, and brothers-in-law fought in a war for a country that, while recognizing their citizenship, did NOT recognize their ability to vote for democratic representation (as the state of Arizona, for a time, successfully argued that residents of Native American reservations did not legally reside within the electoral jurisdiction of the state). My grandfather was an engineer - which was impressive considering how few men, let alone Native American men, earned that degree back then, but the United States census always listed him as a “farmer” for his vocation - as the census did for all O’odham men at that time, and by all accounts, he was a fun-loving and responsible family man. My grandfather served on the Salt River tribal council briefly before agreeing to move his young family to live on his wife’s Gila River reservation.

Lawrence, like his wife’s cousin Ira Hayes, fought in the Pacific Theater. Like Ira Hayes, as well, my grandfather was able to fortunately survive a war that killed so many and return home to start and, by all meaningful measures, raise a close and loving family. However, as a likely consequence of his time in combat, my grandfather developed blood clots that unknowingly dwelled in his body until he was 44 when they unleashed their fatal power on him. Lawrence died three years before my parents got married and six years before I was born. Still, in my daily recognition of those ancestors I knew in my life but are now gone, I do still remember my maternal grandfather as the love and care he showed to those who, in turn, loved and cared for me was profound and indelible.

There was only ever one photo of my grandfather, and I did see it everyday I was in my grandmother’s house in Sacaton, Arizona, but it was lost when my aunts and uncles moved out of my grandmother’s house and the domicile was consequently demolished by the Gila River tribal government before anyone was able to recover the remaining personal items inside. (There is MUCH more to this moment in my family history - effects of elements of grief and laziness, of new wealth, and of obsessive, compulsive disorders - but those details can be shared at another time.) Strangely, there is a photo wherein that photo is actually in the background, but one would need “Bladerunner” levels of technology we don’t have to recreate the original photo to a level even moderately approaching what it was. That same “picture of a picture” of my grandfather, funnily, is also intimately connected to my son.

My mom (upper left) and her new husband, my dad, gathered with her sisters Janice (right), Margo (middle), and Toni (center left), two of Toni’s daughters, five-year old Michelle and eight-year old Laurie, and her mother, my grandmother, in 1968 to take a snapshot in front of the modest Christmas Tree in my grandma’s house in Sacaton, Arizona. In the background, on the wall, one can see the photo of my grandfather on the wall. I can feel the happiness in the moment, and also because there were so few photos of my family taken and even fewer that have survived, I sincerely enjoy looking at the photo. As mentioned before, Laurie is my son’s biological grandmother, and Toni is his biological great-grandmother - I appreciate that fact, but it was my wife that noticed the prevalence of women in the photo (I grew up in a home dominated by women, so I never thought anything of that plain fact). My wife also recognized the strong family connection to our son; specifically, my wife could absolutely sense the strength and on-going protection of the women pictured over our boy. At first, I did not ascribe much to my wife’s sentiment, but following gentle reflection, I understood fully her feeling, and it made my heart glad.

My son has a family history, and I endeavor to ensure he knows it.

I was recently blessed with a pair of Bald Eagle wings from the U.S. Eagle Repository (quick note: possession of eagle feathers is illegal EXCEPT for enrolled members of federally recognized Native American tribes). From an essential perspective, they were merely the wings left over from a dead bird - abundant collections of feathers and little more. However, to many people, many Native Americans generally, and to me very specifically, rather than being just amalgamations of simple proteins assembled into functional shapes and patterns, eagle feathers embody the life and spirit of hallowed beings. To receive an eagle feather is a great honor. To receive whole wings, I initially understood but learned with much greater depth, in order to see and smell and feel, to respect and treat, to ultimately share with others is an indescribable blessing.

I had never “processed” eagle wings before, so I consulted with friends and gathered what knowledge I could. I also recalled, of all things, my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts, and their lessons in preparing poultry for our consumption. The removal of the magnificently large primary and secondary wing feathers was pretty straightforward, but, man, eagle sinew is NO JOKE. With the right knife stroke and with some raw force, the big feathers were removed. After removing what flesh and sinew I could, I placed the quills of the large feathers in borax to dry what bits remained. I knew I wanted to retain the wing tips for fans, and it was identification and separation of the joint that really caused me to recall my mom - as I said, of all things…

After the process of “deconstructing” the wings, I was moved to take one feather a day to more fully clean the quill, to bless with sage, and to reflect and pray. I recovered almost 40 large feathers, so I am lucky to have the opportunity to complete that exercise for a while.

My soul has, amusingly, become obsessed with eagle feathers, but I appreciate that positive mania seizing me. I think about the freedom of the birds. I construct lenses seeing strength and courage and wisdom in the fabric of the remains of deceased birds. There is everything right with that, though, as we may, I believe, realize the best value of the grace and beauty that is undeniably inherent within the eagles and, by inspired extension, within all ourselves - all by considering the sensory and emotional presence of, arguably simple, feathers.

In my daily cleansing and prayer process, I have recalled those loved ones that have gone on. The eagle that grew the feathers I hold has gone on, but it lived the best life it could while it could. The lessons of my ancestors that once shared my life are ever present within my mind and memory, but moments of introspection, focused by actions like I have been employing, may focus those teachings - and the past love shared. To be able to feel the significance of my departed loved ones, to concentrate the depth and breadth of the love and wisdom of those gone, and to appreciate the value and importance of those here with me right now and our privileges we have to care and act is a genuinely consecrated gift.

Today, I took the first eagle feather which I ever received out of its cedar box home. Twenty four years ago, my friend, and a protector of traditional knowledge within my O’odham tribe, presented me with a Golden Eagle feather. In many tribes, the eagle feather is often given as recognition of great achievement. In our tribe, eagle feathers were traditionally also given in recognition of achievement, but rather than general accomplishment, it was acts of benefit to the whole community that were specifically meant to be honored. I received that feather knowing that tradition (but also reminded during the act of gifting), and I was humbled and honored. Today, I felt it was time to take that old feather and give it some time in the sun. She was always a bit rough, but I always felt peace and strength from her. Looking at her today, I felt age and experience - both with the feather and with me. I welcomed the sight and thoughts for, as I am fond of thinking, when I depart this plane, I want to know, and I would like it to be seen and known, that I lived.

I try, and will continue to endeavor to, as best I can, recall the past, and I hope to illuminate the present in order to see, with hope and grace, and with the blessings and wisdom of the our greater community, a better road for my feet tomorrow. I will walk this path as well and as long as I can. I know.

On July 18, 2024, my brother Lawrence died at the age of 51. He was probably never in good physical health for the duration of his life, but his spirit was the most sincere and positive I have ever known. He had the fortune to die of natural causes at his home. He is survived by his widow, Jennifer. My personal state has been improving.

I now find myself as the “elder” member of the family and the last of a dwindling line. It was my mom’s idea to get the immediate family together, roughly 30 years ago, for the picture included with this post. My brother is the boy in the beret in the upper left of the photo. Going counter-clockwise (the appropriate O’odham direction, by the way), the folks are: my Uncle Herman, my Aunt Margo, my Great-Aunt Ruth (my maternal grandfather’s sister), my Aunt Janice, my Uncle Jim, my Dad, and my Great-Aunt Ruth’s husband (at the time), Floyd. My mom is in the middle, and I’m just to the right of my brother in the photo.

My Uncle Herman, born 1948, and I are the only two left from the people in this photo. My Great-Aunt Ruth, despite being married six times, never had children (that is a whole other story). My Aunt Margo also never had children. My Aunt Janice had a child with her husband, my Uncle Jim, but Kathryn died immediately after being born due to in vitro development complications as a consequence, the doctor guessed, of my Uncle Jim’s exposure to Agent Orange. My brother had no children.

In order of passage from this life, the deceased seen in this photo are:

Aunt Ruth - 1914 to 1996

Uncle Jim - 1952 to 2009

Mom (Lorna) - 1948 to 2010

Floyd - 1924 to 2011

Dad (Wolf-Dieter) - 1944 to 2013

Aunt Margo - 1956 to 2019

Aunt Janice - 1949 to 2023

“Lonnie” (Lawrence) - 1973 to 2024

O’odham was the first language for five of the ten people in this group. German was the first language for my dad. My great-aunt was alive during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 that took her older older sister and two older brothers. My Uncle Jim suffered from PTSD and physical tremors from nerve damage from combat in Vietnam. Poverty and wealth were experienced by everyone in the photo, relationships were begun, grown, and occasionally died, and the reaches of the world were explored. There is history in this photo, and I am obligated, at least for the benefit of my son and, with good fortune, his children, to recall the experiences, perspectives, and beneficial values of the family with which I was lucky enough to have been blessed.

Next up will be a eulogy, of sorts, for my brother then, in the spirit of the Halloween season and to “honor” my Aunt Janice, I will recollect some “spooky” stories from our family’s experiences in O’odham Jewed over the next few days.

Looking back, I was so inspired to really start (again) to “remember” events occurring in O’odham jeved - then my aunt died. My Aunt Janice was the last surviving member of the preceding generation. She was my mom’s sister, and I was her legal guardian and caregiver. Interestingly, I don’t think I was as close to her as I was to my parents and even her sister, my other aunt, but I’m guessing the cumulative effect of the realization that all my immediate family’s “elders” were gone hit me hard. I have had thoughts and ideas cross my mind to put on Substack, but I have been unwilling (or unable) to put the words out there. This morning I told myself I simply need to write and represent.

Yesterday was the first day of summer for 2024. On the O’odham calendar, it essentially, and for many now, officially represents the beginning of the O’odham year. It is the longest day of the year, the sun reaches its farthest journey to the north, and the life-giving summer rains should begin directly. I have and have had numerous relatives with June birthdays - including my dad’s.

My dad was born in Danzig (aka Gdansk) in what was at the time, 1944, Nazi Germany. Just days after his birth, he and his mom abandoned their temporary home of Gdansk. (My dad’s grandfather, my great-grandfather, was a German admiral with a sister and other family in Stockholm, Sweden, so the strategic port city of Gdansk was a convenient and practical base of operations for him.) My grandfather, a doctor, was working with the Red Cross in France when my dad was born, and he was taken as a prisoner of war shortly after D-Day. My grandmother traveled with my infant father across Germany (after the ship they were supposed to be on that was to take them to Stockholm was torpedoed) down to my great-grandfather’s family home, where my great-grandmother was living, on Lake Konstanz on the border between Germany and Switzerland.

After the war, my grandfather bought property in Weiden very near Cologne (I believe it is actually within the current Cologne city limits, in fact), and my dad and his two brothers grew up there. Rather than “gymnasium” (equivalent to “high school” for Americans), my dad became an apprentice to become a pastry chef. However, as soon as he turned 21, my dad told his parents he was going to practice his trade in America.

My dad could not speak English very well. His French was just a little better, so he first moved to Montreal. Eventually, he made his way to Calgary then after meeting my mom via a penpal introduction, he visited Arizona then married and settled here.

My mom’s father had passed a few years before my dad met my mom. So when my dad wanted to get permission, as was the way, to marry my mom, my maternal grandmother arranged to have him speak to her adopted father, my maternal great-grandfather, in Sells, Arizona. Sells is a remote town/village today. In 1968, Sells was the edge of the world, and my great-grandfather, though he could speak Spanish and English as well, chose only to speak in O’odham. He approved of my father and mother getting married - allegedly. My parents got married, but my dad knew almost no O’odham, and my knowledge of this marriage proposal comes really only from him.

I really have no doubt that my great-grandfather gave his approval and support. I would occasionally travel with my grandmother from Sacaton to Sells (about 100 miles across virtually empty Sonoran desert) to check on her dad and to give her relatives living in Sells some respite from checking on him. As I said, my great-grandfather only spoke O’odham, but what I could pick up was always loving comments about my grandmother, my parents, and me. Those times living with my great-grandfather in 1970’s and 1980’s Sells, though maybe physically and economically difficult at times, were some of the most comforting and secure moments of my life.

(The remains of the great-grandfather’s house still stand, but they are rapidly settling back into the desert.)

After my mom died, I spent much of my time with my dad revisiting past moments in his life. I tried to make a point of taking him to places of importance to him when I could. Not long before my dad, himself, passed away, we were able to make it to Sells. As part of that trip, I took my dad to the Tohono O’odham museum in Topawa and caught the image of my dad basically where his marriage began in O’odham jeved with Elder Brother’s home, Baboquivari, rising behind him. For me, it a tremendous combination of meaning and emotion.

On the last day of June in 2013, my dad passed from this world. I had hoped to take my dad to Gdansk in 2014 for this 70th birthday, but it was not meant to be.

I heard once that most people die within a few miles of where they were born. If I were to die today, that would certainly be true for me. My dad was born in a distant place in a wholly different time. He died thousands of geographic miles from his birth after having heard many different languages and experiencing places and cultures far removed from one another.

Life is lived, regardless, but our choices guide us and sometimes absolutely propel us in unimagined directions. We may “endure” events; however, we choose to condemn or appreciate what confronts and happens to us. I saw very little besides appreciation for life from my family - most now gone from our shared time. I attempt, and even sometimes succeed, to be always grateful for the blessings of life.

My last post was regarding trying to catch the memories of my oldest, and nearly last, living relative - my Aunt Janice. I had ambitious plans to take copious notes after determining and asking specific meaningful questions then try to encapsulate the breadth of a human life in a few writings.

However, two days after my last post, my Aunt Janice died. It was her time. I was not surprised, and to an extent, I was happy for her as her physical health had deteriorated so significantly.

Her funeral was small. She actually did not want anything formal. In her words, all she wanted was for me to “burn her” then “dig a hole” over her husband’s grave and bury her. Funerals are for the living, though, and I coordinated a modest opportunity for her friends and relatives to pay their final respects. It was a peaceful process without drama nor anger nor antipathy.

There was a hiccup when we lost track of where my Uncle’s grave was. The weeds this last spring of 2023, even in the Sonoran desert, were ridiculous, and someone stole the large, heavy wrought-iron cross (probably for a few pennies of scrap value) marking my Uncle Jim’s grave. Consequently, I selected the wrong location for the small grave to be dug for the inurnment. Fortunately (and I believe somewhat divinely), a relative of the person’s grave I had mistakenly identified as my Uncle’s happened to visit the cemetery while family friends were digging. I was informed during the wake, and we decided to regroup at the cemetery before sunrise.

With help from many others - family friends, Gila River tribal employees (cemetery crew), and members of the Gila River and Salt River Pima communities - my identification of the freshly cleared land of my uncle’s grave was confirmed, and a new hole was dug. While our friends completed the relatively quick task of preparing a new resting place for my aunt’s urn, I drove with her remains through Sacaton.

Now, we (my mom, aunts, brother, and I) are all enrolled members of the Salt River tribe, but my grandmother - my aunt’s mother - was enrolled in Gila River, and, as a result of agreement with my grandfather, a house was built in Sacaton in which my mom and aunts grew up and in which I spent the greater part of my childhood. The house is long gone, but I drove my aunt past its former location as the sun began to make its way over the eastern horizon. We continued through the village past St. Anthony’s (my uncle was Irish Catholic) and the remains of the massive, historic “C. H. Cook” Presbyterian church (my great-grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and part of the original “class” of students following the teachings of the missionary Charles Cook, and this church played a dominant role in our family’s lives). I drove past some other locations meaningful to my aunt then made the 15 mile drive back to the Vah-Ki Cemetery.

The plan was to simply to say a final Christian prayer and blessing of committal at the grave then bury my aunt, but my cousin and an elder from Gila River offered to make a final traditional blessing and to sing the song remembering the place “just beyond and before the sunrise” where O’odham go after their physical bodies have expired. The sun was low but bright, and there was a slight breeze circulating the perfect spring temperatures that morning; it was beautiful.

Months later, I still hold regrets that I wasn’t as good a nephew to my aunt as I could have been. I was responsible, in generally regular turn, of caring for my mom, my dad, my Aunt Margo, and finally, my Aunt Janice in their final days - four people ultimately laid to rest over fifteen years of work and worry. I tell myself I did a satisfactory job - that my efforts beyond the simply necessary (of which there were many) were loved and appreciated, but I cannot help but allow guilt to occasionally grip me.

I have been provided countless blessings and opportunities in life, and I do reluctantly but honestly admit a level of irritation with the responsibilities of taking care of my relatives during the ends of their lives. Having a tiny family has its drawbacks - chiefly, there are few options for alternative or aid in taking care of elder family members. I futilely, and foolishly, asked, “why me?” As with other obligations that tasked me and revealed my selfishness, I accepted my responsibilities and tried my best to help those who needed help.

I know there was an option to choose a different course of action - as all life consists merely of on-going acts of choice. What do I do? Why? For whom? For me, the choices with my relatives were not overwhelmingly attractive, but they were clearly defined.

As a child, those same people - my mom, dad, and aunts - made their own choices to help me in my growth and understanding of life. I was indebted to them.

However, their choices to help me as a child and adult were, I know, founded wholly in love, and ultimately, my choices to take care of them were easy because love motivated and embraced me.

Sometimes life can seem confusing and staggering; personal joy and preference may take precedence and be nearly irresistible, but love, unadulterated in perspective and understanding, can provide tremendous clarity and comfort. I am grateful everyday for the love of family now gone but also, so much, for the strong and supportive love of friends and family here.

I am grateful.

Time passes so quickly. Hours become days. Days become weeks. Weeks become years.

It’s been too long to neglect my thoughts for this outlet, so I’m writing a quick post.

Death has made another recent round of visits to my family and friends, and the grief affects me more than I want to admit. I thought the past hardened me, but I suppose death - the loss of love - is never, ever easy to deal with.

Nearly fifteen years ago, my family encountered a time of great loss - my wife lost multiple cousins and, most devastatingly, her mom. I lost cousins, an uncle, and also my mom. All in all, we had ten close family members die within twelve months. My side of the family is small, and I have some earned credit as a “responsible party”, so I was usually saddled with the tasks of making arrangements, notifying, and consoling - not an easy job, I think, for just one relative, but I accepted the responsibilities with as much strength as I could find. Along with the emotional trauma, I had financial crises to confront. All I could do was have faith that life will only give you what you can handle and find my way out of the darkness in which I was placed.

After taking care of my dad for a couple years after my mom’s passing, my dad left this earth. Another time of sadness enveloped me, but I had more available support, so I was able to get through it a bit “easier”.

Between my dad’s death in 2013 and the death of one of my mom’s remaining two sisters, there was more adversity - enough to reserve comment today and MAYBE share in the future in its own post, but it is enough to say, I had to take on the role of caregiver with full physical and mindful commitment.

Within a few months in 2019, one aunt died and the other was hospitalized then placed in a rehabilitation facility and ultimately accepted a room in a skilled-nursing group home. COVID hit in 2020, and I found myself (her only visitor - I have a brother, but again, that is whole other story) visiting with her for nearly a year through the window she fortunately had.

My aunt, my last living tie to the generations before me, is now 74. She has been on dialysis for almost 25 years. She has lost the ability to walk and to feed herself, but her mind is sharp. My focus, for awhile, on this platform will be to share her thoughts and perspective from a different time. I’m looking forward to what we’ll find together.

Some meandering but maybe meaningful thoughts as background…

I grew up on the Gila and Salt River Indian reservations, and I can say with certainty that we were financially poor.

My father was born in Gdańsk, Nazi Germany the day before D-Day. While my grandfather was a prisoner of war in France (being a doctor, he was well-cared for), my grandmother and infant father traveled by foot across Germany to my great-grandparents’ home on the German-Swiss border.

After the war, my grandparents settled in Köln, and that was where my father lived (aside from apprenticeship time in Düsseldorf) until he turned 21, and he immigrated to North America. Not really speaking English well, but French well enough, my father moved to Montreal. After time, he made his way to Calgary and while there, made contact with my mother as a pen pal.

My mother was born in Phoenix, Arizona. Her father was Salt River Pima, and her mother was Gila River Pima. My mom grew up on the Salt River rez, but my grandfather wanted to make my grandmother happy, and they moved to Sacaton on the Gila River reservation when my mom was 14.

An engineer, my grandfather intended to build a new home for his family on their land in Sacaton, but he had a very untimely death at the age of 44 due to an aneurysm - likely a latent result of injuries suffered during World War II. My mom was 17, her sisters were 15 and 8, and they and their mother were left living in a “temporary” house without any regular income. My grandmother was an RN, so she found work at the state prison about 30 miles away in Florence. My mother, wanting to help, started working as a secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as soon as she graduated high school. It was there that, one day, the agency superintendent handed her a letter telling her she could respond if she wanted. Some guy was looking for pen pals.

In 1968, my parents were married - a German immigrant and a Native American. They had different backgrounds, but they embraced a common future. Of all their commonalities, the one that likely made the greatest impression on me was the drive to move beyond where one was.

Like I said, we were poor, so, in reality, my brother, my parents, and I spent the greatest part of our time in Sacaton. On occasion, we would travel to Casa Grande, Coolidge, or Chandler for needed items or services, and a few times a year, we would travel to Phoenix. It was an amazing experience for me to be in Phoenix with all the varied sights and sounds. It seemed so impressive to me as a city then. Though now I can recognize what a little burg Phoenix really was in the 1970’s, it let me feel some of the possible greater excitement and energy of humanity.

With just the right circumstances of desire and ability, my parents would take my brother and me to other parts of the state. My great-uncle, who was over 100 years old, lived with his wife (herself in her 90’s) in Casa Blanca, so we would go there often. They spoke only Pima and though they lived in a newer built house, they still maintained their old “ki” (a shallow pit house covered with a dome of arrow-weed) and “vatho” (a ramada with mesquite trunk posts and an arrow-weed roof). If we spent the night, only my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate slept in the house; the rest of us slept under the vatho - I truly loved that. Also, although there was a bathroom with modern plumbing in the house, it was reserved for the elders, so us younger folk had to use the outhouse - that wasn’t as fun, especially when rattlesnakes would wander near or INTO the facilities.

My great-grandfather lived in Sells, Arizona which was a few hours away near the Mexican border on the Tohono-O’odham reservation, and we made sure to visit him for a few weeks at a time especially during the summer. He was actually my grandmother’s maternal uncle but became her adoptive father after she was orphaned at the age of nine. He also only spoke O’odham (though he could speak English and Spanish, he chose not to), but it was the Tohono O’odham dialect, and that was what my grandmother adapted to speaking and what my mother, aunts, and my brother and I heard and learned as we all grew up.

Southern Arizona was and is hot, and my dad never really acclimated to it (hell, I was born here and never really acclimated to it), so once a year, if we were lucky, my parents would figure out a way to travel north to Flagstaff and, if we were really lucky, the Grand Canyon. Those were the most memorable times for me - letting me witness an environment so, so different from what I was used to.

Eventually, when it came time to pick a college, I wanted to go to an exceptional school but preferably also some place cool with rain and running water rather than the dryness and heat I knew so well. Recruited by Dartmouth and provided a trip there by the college when I was a junior in high school, I eagerly applied my senior year and happily matriculated after being accepted.

We had so many different cars growing up, it was funny, but my last two years in high school, we were, for the most part, carless. With my share of the tribe’s water settlement that I received when I turned 18, I bought an old van my parents were trying to “buy” from a private dealer who took advantage of numerous people on the reservation with Godforsaken terms. For their own fun, and to help me move my belongings to New Hampshire from Arizona, my parents offered to drive me the three thousand miles to Dartmouth from Salt River.

So, in late August of 1989, my explorer parents and I drove across the country. It turned out to be the first of many for me. By 1995, I personally drove across the nation almost thirty times. My trip with my parents, as well as my other trips with friends (some who would become very much like family), will be the likely frequent subject of these posts.

I still love the road, but those old trips were special. No responsibilities except schoolwork, no cell phones, the best company, plenty of resources and good, reliable vehicles - those were the ingredients for magic.

With luck, maybe a little of those captivating moments from the past can be distilled into a drop or two of energy and emotion today.

Eleven years ago, on January 15, 2010, my mom passed.

Typically, I silence my phone when I go to sleep. Occasionally I’ll turn it to “Do Not Disturb” (I really should do that more often because emergency calls will ring on the second attempt to reach me.). Eleven years ago, however I had an inkling that something may happen overnight, so I left my ringer on. Before sunrise, I received a frantic call from my dad telling me my mom wasn’t breathing and that he’d called 911. Before I even left my front door, I knew she was gone from this world.

Two years after my mom, my dad passed on June 30, 2013. He was in a rehab facility at the time, and no one was with him when he physically died, but I take solace in the fact that I told him, “I love you” as my last words to him a few hours before.

Not long after my dad died, my aunts - my mother’s sisters - moved into my parents house. One had only one leg and needed a wheelchair to get anywhere beyond her recliner/bed (because she neglected to do her physical therapy with her prosthetic). My other aunt was in nominally better shape but had been on dialysis for fourteen years by that point, and her physical abilities were rapidly declining. From 2013 to 2019, I spent more and more of my time taking care of my aunts. I wished for help. I asked for help. I begged for help from everyone I could think of, but everyone was either too busy or simply incapable of helping. I broke an ankle at one point and occasionally had to use a cane because of my strained back. On June 5, 2019, one of my two aunts passed away. It was returning from her grave a couple days ago when I took the included photo of the San Tan Mountains as seen from the south - a view I know oh-so-well as I spent many of my childhood years living on the very northern edge of Sacaton, Arizona where this was the view from the back door and yard.

Life is not death though. Death may come now and again to change our lives, but it only accents growth and places it in comfortable context. It is something new that happens to us - grievous as it may sometimes be. Five years ago, on January 14, 2016, something else new happened to me. That was the day we, Rachel and I, legally completed our adoption of Marcus. I have always considered my life blessed, but he has been one of my greatest blessings.

It is primarily for Marcus that I record these memories. He may or may not be interested, but I leave them for him first.

It’s been a few weeks since I set up this Substack. I feel it’s necessary to expand on that most generic introduction originally published.

My name is Hans-Dieter Stefan Klose. My father was born in Gdańsk, Poland (Nazi Germany at the time of his birth in 1944) and raised in Koln, Germany before immigrating to the United States in 1968. My mother is Akimel O’odham (Pima) from the Salt River reservation in southern Arizona. I am an enrolled member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, but I have relatives and have lived on the Gila River Indian Community and Tohono O’odham Nation at different times in my life as well.

My family has gotten smaller (remarkable, really, in modern Native American communities), and my brother has no children, so we are near the end of the line for our bit of the family string. I decided to publish to this site for a couple reasons. First and foremost, I want to record pieces of my family’s history. It may be of simple interest to some, but, emerging from my most personal objectives, it will also provide some record for my son of who we are and where he came from. The second reason I decided to publish some of my thoughts is simply to share ideas I may have that would take more time than the typical Facebook or Instagram post would likely be anticipated to take to read.

Chief among my varied thoughts will be those on land in Native America. The O’odham have existed as a unique linguistic group for at least two thousand years. If one assumes there was linguistic and genetic “crossover” with the Huhugam (who are considered an independent group of people in our own creation stories), then our people have been on this part of the planet for more than four millennia. The twentieth century saw the solidification of reservation systems and the piecemeal allotment of lands to individual Indians. As we make our way further into the twenty-first century and further from the “Reservation Era” (as I am calling it), I believe there is an ongoing opportunity for Native Americans to reclaim their histories and identities, and one of the most meaningful ways they can exercise their authority is to move past the literal confines of federally managed reservations and government imposed and supported philosophies and into the realm of truly sovereign jurisdictions.

The early twentieth century saw the nadir of populations for our peoples. There is a massive boom of tribal populations going on right now, yet the world is vastly different than it was one hundred years ago (and certainly more than it was one thousand years ago) and it extends its cultural influence deep into every society of the world, threatening to dilute each into merely a version of the dominant. We need to seize every chance we have to remember the past - the stories, the language, the customs - and to formulate a genuinely meaningful future of identity and place for our peoples and their descendants. Those chances are renewed with every new day.