Te amo, Oma

Here are bright lights in the city of Portland.  A local artist started putting them up around various parks.  Time went by, she got more money, and now they grace all the major public spaces in the town.

The specifics change from year to year - but the lights go up in early November and keep us company until the middle of January.

Then they come down.

The local Chamber of Commerce, the Portland Downtown District - all, all have waved pots of money in her face to keep the lights up.

But no.  Sometime after Epiphany - January 6, to be precise, though the real time varies - the pretty lights come down and we go back to regular dark - but entertaining - Portland.

The reason being that she wants to lights to remain special, to have a cachet to them, rather than being part of a more commercial wall of "visual background noise".

When I was a child in Tulsa all of the Christmas trees would be burned in a massive bonfire in one of the parks. Trees were stacked two stories high, set alight while the fire department stood by on all sides.  It was a wonderful, terrible sight - the Holidays were well and truly done, an almost Viking-like ending for the green tower of Christmas joy that only recently had graced our living room.

And so we come to saying goodbye to my friend Mary Flagg.  "Oma" to her great-grandchildren.

Actually, truth be told there is no Cherokee word for "goodbye".  We say "see you again", or "be well", something like that.  Leave it to the Dominant Culture to neatly wrap things up and tuck them away.

A worldview that breeds a pointless fear of death, of change, of growth, of clearing and planting and harvesting -  and feasting.  A Newtonian worldview (well, that's not really fair to the guy who invented differential calculus - but I digress) when Heisenberg and Einstein may have come closer to getting it right.

No matter (pardon the pun).  Today we acknowledged this transition in our experience of this great lady.  The service at St. Luke's was clearly planned - readings and hymns preselected, the 1928 Prayer Book Service, full of Thees and Thous and manifold sins - complete with choir.  She had taken care of everything years before - everything.

I was privileged to sit with the family - I'm frankly not sure where else I'd have sat.  A voice kept ringing in my head, in counterpoint to the deep feeling of the great hymns we sang - "A Mighty Fortress" - "Be Thou My Vision" - ringing and saying "Pay attention.  Pay attention.  Inside.  Outside.  Pay attention."

Mary did that for people.  She made us pay attention.  Whether or not we got anything was up to us, I think.

I spent most of the reception with her three-year old great-grandson in my arms, playing my alternate role of "horse" (my primary one being "mule").  He and I share a rich communicability - he's arrived at language late but arrive he has done - we get on well. 

This freed up his parents to circulate.

Later, over sushi, his father - Mary's grand-son-in-law (EH, my bestest friend) brought me up to speed on the internment, which happened earlier, in the late morning.

He said it was good, that a weight came off of him.  His wife had told me, earlier, that it was hard, in a good way.

I think the physicality of burial - the specific concrete act of digging, lowering, praying - in the Cherokee way, covering - can push you into acknowledging the finality and possibility of death.  I know that is strange, but bear with me for a moment more.

I'm not one for "pie in the sky by and by" - jury is out for me on actual, corporeal existence after death.  I think people who believe so are fooling themselves.  Being lulled with simplistic, rosy views of death can make it easier to be dismissive of the complexities and possibilities of life.  

It could also be that those with a frank, honest attitude about death think the same way about life.

I could be wrong both ways, of course - I'll get back to you after I've been dead awhile.

So E and M get it.  Tired from the sheer logistics of a funeral, tired from hosting, tired from explaining and tired from feeling - they still have the energy to get it.

And the children?

Perhaps this is the lesson - the next great-granddaughter, shuffling in big  circles next to the graveside as the service wore on, back and forth, around and around, intent, smiling, looking at her feet.

Her parents, ever concerned with decorum (I mean, they are Mary Flagg's grandchildren by blood and marriage) keep a watchful eye - until both figure out the meaning of a little girl's funereal shuffling dance.

There in the snow, to someday be melted and gone - perhaps with flowers springing up, strawberries, maybe - great big looping words ...

"Goodbye, Oma".

Done in snow, done with love, done because all of us live in each other's hearts and saints and poets know, some.

"All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well" - Julian of Norwich.

Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.