Good Morning

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.