Grief

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

I’m sorry to say, it’s another week without a proper newsletter. When I started this project, there was no way I could have known the tragedies that would befall my family. On Thursday, May 5, my beloved 10-year-old niece Emmylou passed away. This earth-shattering grief is too much, and I have nothing profound to say.

Earlier this week, I told my therapist that there’s so many wonderful elegies written, and my instinct is always to turn to literature. Memorializing our dead is one of the most classic themes of literature, a human instinct to remember and record our love and loss.

Maybe someday I’ll be ready to write about the dear sweet child we lost, but for now there is only pain.

I leave you with this poem.

For Kathryn
by Laura Tohe

A hummingbird hovers above the branches outside the window.
Soon the earth will rise again.
Waking from earth’s sleep,
green leaves begin to emerge.
Tiny purple flowers bloom like tiny notes of music.
Háshínee’, and so it is.
We called you loved one;  we called you   daughter,   sister,   wife,   mother,   grandmother;
we called you.   friend,    teacher.
After we have feasted in your honor, remembered you in tender ways,
told stories of you,
and the rain has washed away our tears,
we will give you back to the other side.
  We will release you.
                   We will sing you back to your relatives,
                                sing you back to the places where you once walked,
                                          and return you to the stars.
                                                           Háshínee’, and so it is.
                                                             You will return to us
                                                            in the changing season
                                          of a hummingbird hovering above a branch
                                            in the season of green leaves emerging,
                                 in the notes of tiny purple flowers singing in the rain. 

 

*Háshínee’ is a Navajo female term of endearment

Copyright © Laura Tohe. Used with permission of the author.