February 19, 2024
I’m a bit early with my remembering of Mother’s passing. It was 2009, March 2. In October of that year, close friends Karen James and Candace Sweet accompanied me on a road trip to New Mexico. Mother loved New Mexico and wanted her ashes to be scattered there. Mother was in in the back seat of my red CRV. She was in a Mrs. Pulsifer basket. We could easily talk to her as we drove down the Columbia, through Oregon, through Boise and into the Southwest.
We rented a mobile home that belonged to my friends Rose and Eugene Vigil. It was near Taos. We visited them in their weaving studio and I ended up purchasing one of Eugene’s large blankets. It is on my wall near my loom. I see it every day.
We visited Carpio Bernal Watercrow, a Taos pueblo artist who was a friend of Karen’s and a friend of Bruce Subiyay Miller. They had been in La Mama Native American Theatre Ensemble together. Carpio sang a song for Bruce. He showed us a photo of him with Helen Mirren, published in her new autobiography and signed to him by her. They had done theatre together. He also instructed us in the way to treat mother’s farewell. He gave us feathers to place on her altar and said to put three of her favorite foods on the altar. Easy. Chicken gizzards, glazed donuts and sopapillas.
We traveled above Truchas, past mother’s favorite weaver, Cordova. Karen and Candace built the altar on a blanket we had with us. I tossed the ashes into a mountain stream..one that would carry her down to the Rio Grande and, eventually, to distant oceans. I sang. I think it was a 1940s song…With Someone Like You..something she liked. I know my arms were covered with mother’s ashes.
That night, Candace guided me on a journey, into an altered state. Karen stayed in a back room, door closed. I cried and screamed and fell to the floor and called out, “haven’t I done enough?” I don’t know how long I was gone. But I finally got up and opened the door to look at the sky.
Sage, the half coyote neighbor dog we had befriended, stood at the door step and spoke English to me. I said, not now, I’ve had enough for one night. Good Sage.
The best road trip of my life. Here are a few photos.Karen’s birthday is the 27 of February. So these next few weeks are full of sacred rememberings
