Farewell Zami

                    

            We came home from a weekend retreat to find a reality we have tried to prepare ourselves for had come true. Our twenty-two year old cat had passed. Part of my heart constricted. I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know how we unloaded the car.

We just did.   

On a snowy afternoon in January 1999, Kelley and I made our way to adopt a cat in Fredonia, NY. I had had a dream the night before about an all grey cat, so I thought we knew what to look for. But in the kennel with all the grey cats was a grey tiger with Bengal markings. She met me at the door and, when I picked her up, she tucked her head into the crook of my arm—and the purring! I tried to meet some of the other cats but, each time, she got there first and it was her head beneath my hand. I called Kelley over, repeat. We took her home.

They didn’t know much about her. When the caretaker came out to feed the cat he found Zami waiting outside the barn door, waiting to be let in.
            When we got her, she came with a free spaying. The vet said she was at least two years old. When I called the next day to check on her, they told us that it was going to cost a bit extra for the abortion. I panicked. I knew what a pregnant cat looked like and it floored me. She had been pregnant, though she was so malnourished and skinny even the humane employees had not suspected. For reasons. She had a litter of five kittens. All but one was dead and three were being reabsorbed by her uterus for food. But it would have killed her in the end. Because we picked her, because we took her home, she had a fighting chance.

She was never sick again.

Zami was a great cat. So thankful to be indoors and have snuggles. So grateful for a dry space with couches and cushions. Over the years she has made many friends. It was hard not to love her, even when she kneaded your kneecap in her joy. With her claws. It was her speciality.

            I barely remember an ‘us’ without her.

            She’s gone now.

Best buds, Luna and Zami

            Her name was inspired by Audre Lorde’s biomythography of the same name. It means “female husband” and we knew when we went looking for her, we wanted more than just a pet. Zami was never our kid. She was more like a third partner, one who greatly disapproved of our choice to bring other kittens into the house. When we brought tiny Luna into the house, Zami hid under Kelley’s altar for weeks. The kitten was undeterred and Luna became her greatest friend and companion. Zami never recovered from her loss.

When Bella came into the house Zami was like, “Another one?!” She tried to ignore the tiny presence, but the tortoise shell never went away. Zami spent some time hiding on top of the kitchen cupboards until Bella got bigger. They became unwilling siblings and there were so many moments we would walk in on the two of them, after Luna died, almost-touching and Bella would look at us with big eyes, asking us not to fuck it up, and we would back slowly out of the room to give them that space.

(front to back) Bella, Zami,and Luna on Christmas morning 2008

            Zami never really recovered from losing both of them. She and Mara never really connected, but they tolerated space together. These last few years were hard for Zami. She was old, but otherwise healthy. She walked stiffly around the house and slept on the heating grate in the winter. She slept most of the hours of the day and only got up to pee, drink water, eat, or when one of her friends came to visit.

She loved people. She loved being social. She was a lap whore and she could dead-weight her body in seconds. If you wouldn’t let her in your lap, she would not-make-eye-contact and slink in at a snail’s pace, truly believing that if she didn’t look at you, you couldn’t see her. She was ¼ Bengal cat with long skinny legs and a long skinny tail. She had serious ninja skills, unfortunate for us. She was a night prowler. It was how she kept us safe. I have so many photos of her but they’re all pre-digital images. That says something to me.

(All this past tense hurts.)

She also had a string of special friends, which speaks to her longevity. She had the loudest and most prolific purr. She could go for hours without stopping. Depending on her level of excitement there were also chirps and coos. Somewhere I have a video of her purr, from before Luna died, because we were already wondering when we might lose her. That video is at least six years old.

She was also a hunter of all things rodent and a consistent closed-door-opener. Keeping her out was never a successful venture. I caught her in the act once, and watched her jump up and wrap her arms so she was hanging from the doorknob. And then she hitched her shoulder up and down, redistributing her weight until the knob twisted and the door clicked open.

I don’t know what happened to her on the streets, but she did not suffer the presence of dogs or male cats. Not for a moment. She would cut-a-bitch so quick. That side of her scared me.

            Her eyes would glaze over and she would be a blur of motion. If I was fast enough I could catch the end of her tail and deter her momentum. Food was always a trigger. She wasn’t interested in people food but if there was cat food anywhere she could smell it and she would do whatever it took to get to it. She had some periods of being a big girl. It’s not uncommon for strays to have food issues. 

She had such a long life. These last few years she developed some form of dementia. She barely recognized me and fixated on my partner as a touchstone in a very creepy, Renfield-like manner. She often got lost staring at a wall and would yowl until we found her and turned her around. She spent most nights isolated in a room with her cat beds and a light on. After that she started sleeping through the nights again. She’s not in pain anymore. She’s with Luna again.

I’m sure that will soothe my heart soon. But not yet.

There was one morning, more than a decade ago, where I was dreaming that I couldn’t breathe. I woke up to a house full of smoke, and Zami head-butting my face and caterwauling at me. I got the small fire out and the windows open thanks to her. It wasn’t the only time she saved me. But I’m thinking about that moment especially right now.

I worked till midnight at a grocery store when we first moved here. One night the phone rang while I was counting out drawers in the back room and instead of my normal can-I-help-you greeting I simply said, “What’s wrong?!”

My partner was hysterical. Zami had leaned against the screen window and the screen had given way and she had fallen out. By the time Kelley got outside, she was gone. Everyone was telling us she would come back. I spent days without sleep. I wandered the streets with cat treats. I made a lot of new cat friends. No Zami.

I put up missing signs. A few days later I received a whispered phone call from someone who said there was a cat matching her description inhaling food on his porch. Where was he? Right across the street!! She’d been there the whole time, right under the porch, listening to me calling for her. I’m certain she thought that since she was outside, she assumed that she had done something wrong. She never wanted to be outside again.

When I ran across the street to scoop her up, my heart was so relieved I cried. She hesitated between running to me and leaving the bowl of food, lol. When I picked her up she put her arms on either side of my neck and hugged me. I cried so hard out of joy.

Today, my bags sit unpacked. My eyelids are puffy and swollen. My heart feels trapped in limbo and I am allowing this floaty feeling to calm my grief. She owned one place in the house, the window seat where she watched the world outside.  On one hand, I am already thinking about cleaning it out so that Mara can have a place all her own, but on the other hand…

Not just yet.

But very soon.

Mara is all right. She doesn’t understand why mommies are so sad, but she feels something is amiss. Zami slept most of the day and spent nights in isolation, per her preference. It may take a couple of days before she understands that Zami isn’t here anymore. So even in the face of death we keep our eyes to the living. It gives us something to focus on other than loss.

Now all of our original kids have passed, an entire generation of our life together is gone. As a pet owner you know to expect it. The reality of it is brutal. Our lives changed in her death, more than we can be aware of at the moment. So we must stand in the doorway, at the gateway of death, and say our goodbyes. And we must open ourselves up to what-is-to-come and allow it room for entrance and purchase.

We had to choose to put Luna and Bella down when they were ill. I wished, more than anything, that when it was her turn to pass, that Zami would slip away quickly. And she did.

            After Bella died, and Zami was the only one left, a stray visited me in the garden. I was still in grief and wanted her to go away. We ended up taking her in. I realized this morning that if I hadn’t opened to love, the house would be completely empty right now. For whatever that's worth.

            Hail to the traveler. Zami has earned her rest.

Celebrating Spirit with a Silent Supper

“And in one house they could see an old grandfather mummy being taken out of a closet and put in the place of honor at the head of the table, with food set before him. And the members of the family sat down to their evening meal and lifted their glasses and drank to the dead one seated there, all dust and dry silence…”

~ Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree, 1972

Dine with the Dead

Bradbury’s text was my first introduction to the idea of the silent dinner with the dead, also known as a Dumb Supper. This formal sit-down is traditionally done any night between October thirty-first and November third. I enjoy it most when we can set the table on Halloween evening, also known as Samhain (sow-in), which we are planning to do this year. This one is also special as it marks the first anniversary of the accident where I almost died.

My Ancestors stood at my bedside with me, helping to channel the healing energy. I was so near death myself that I saw them clearly. A few were faces I recognized but most were new to me, with eyes or jaws or mouths set in familiar slants and patterns. When I was closest to the other side, I was least alone. My wife and I will be celebrating life as we honor those who aided my healing from the spirit world.

It’s meant to be silent but it does not have to be a solemn or somber event. Hold the supper sacred and keep conversation on the experience at hand; it is not a place to chit chat about the workday or chores that need to be done as such mundane life can keep the timid dead away who no longer recognize the world-as-is. Perhaps there was a time when true silence was possible but for the scraping of forks and howling of the wind, but in this day, when our homes are filled with the not-so-quiet hum and thrum of electronics, appliances, traffic and plumbing, I try to use the electrical aids to entice the dead to visit.

We play some kind of music that might appeal to our invited guests. We often listen to the radio drama of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree, which pulls the spirit energy into our home. I grew up sitting around the radio with my family, listening to music. A generation before us it was music and radio serials. The emotional sensation that fills our home when we play the radio drama is one of a joyous family reunion.

The event itself can be as simple or elaborate as your circumstances require. The intention is the magic. Welcome in any weary travelers from the other world and offer them an extra place at your table. Feed them before you feed the living. Allow them an evening of humanity on the night when the overlapping worlds bleed through.

What We Do

We use the dumb supper to open a space for the living and dead to dine together. We have greatly ritualized the evening, though we keep it family-style-casual. At the heart of the evening, it is about honoring Those Who Came Before. We may make a connection and touch spirit world, but that is just an aside. It is not about us. So imagine you are gently trying to lull spirits who have been in other world back into the familiar trappings of life. Think about it like you are starting at the end and moving backwards, like a mirror image of their last breath.

It may seem like a stretch, but apply that to the table itself. I think of the table and meal like a reflection, a photo-negative image of your mundane life. Whatever order you would normally eat dinner courses, serve them backwards. However you would place-set the table, set it backwards. Do you usually put forks on the left and water glass on the right? Reverse them. Whether it makes sense or not, it works, and is one of the oldest guidelines for hosting a supper for the dead.

Prepare the Food

Planning the menu is part of the fun. What foods will you serve? I like to make items that were meaningful to my family as well as items I find that hearken to the cultural heritage I am discovering in my genealogical research: German, Polish, Irish, Dutch, English, French-Canadian, etc. What lines live in your bloodstream?

In order to highlight what makes this supper different, it’s helpful to plan a series of courses. It ends up being a bit more formal than a meal we would normally prepare, but for us, this is a special occasion. It may be helpful to note that pungent and fragrant scents are more enticing to the dead who no longer eat.

Plate the Table

We set a chair at the head of the table and shroud it in black fabric to represent the Spirit Chair. A candle is placed in the center of its plate. This is the setting for all those who wander the night and wish the living no harm. During each of the courses, this chair is the guest of honor.

Then we each set out an extra chair for our personally invited spirit guest. It cannot be someone who has died within the last year. We write the name of our invited guest on a piece of paper and place it beneath their plate. Sometimes I actually write letters or ask a question I am hoping to gain spiritual insight on. If you do not have a particular ancestor you wish to invoke, you may simply write the ancestors of your name, your bloodline, your spiritual heart, etc.

A candle is placed on the center of the plate. I place my guest’s chair across from me, so that I may gaze into the space there, like divination, during the meal. Ultimately, where you place them is not important. What is important is that you serve the Spirit Chair first, your invited guests next, and then yourself. It’s the intention of hospitality that matters most.

Open the Door and Light the Way

At the beginning of the meal, we stand behind the head chair and invite our ancestors to come and dine with us. I even go so far as to open the front door and invite them into my home. We light the candle on the Spirit plate and pour a libation into the cup at the head of the table. I call in the Ancestors with this prayer:

To those who have gone before,

To those whose names live in our hearts and dance upon our lips,

To those whose names have been lost in the sea of time,

To those whose bones lie above and below the earth,

To those whose ashes have travelled on the winds,

We, the living, bid you welcome and entrance.

This action opens door for your personal guests to step in, too. We light the candles on our invited guests’ plates and call them by name. This year I am inviting my unknown-to-me-in-life paternal great-grandmother Hattie Eva Smith. She trained to be a nurse late in life after her husband died. She stood at my left thigh most of the time I was in the ICU.

Enjoy the Evening

A place set for our beloved cats.

The meal itself is also a reflected image of what the dead would remember. We start with the dessert course and sit down to enjoy it. Next, the main course, then the sides. Then the soup and salad, followed by any appetizers and pre-dinner cocktails. You should structure your meal in a way that seems appropriate to you, your heritage and your family traditions- just backwards from whatever that might be.

During each pause in courses, while we are eating, I focus on the space across from me and the multiple sensory impressions I receive. In years past, I have invited my Great-Grandma (known-to-me-in-life) Elsie Durant Riddle to dine with me. From the ether I have been chastised for not salting her meatballs or being stingy on the chocolate cake. I have also heard the gentle trebling of her voice and felt the cool paper of her skin as our hands brushed while I was serving her. I have found myself responding to an unspoken request from her spirit for another napkin. On this night, they can allow themselves the human moments they had in life and we can be reminded of them; Elsie did often need an extra napkin.

Bid the Dead to Rest

When the meal is finished, we express our gratitude to those who came and supped with us. That mostly consists of speaking our thoughts and feelings out loud. When the evening feels over, I thank my guest for coming and I open the front door, wishing them a safe journey for the rest of their evening. I put their candle out. (If I use tea light, I just let them burn out.)

I thank the Ancestors for dining with us and I snuff out the candle on the Spirit Chair. I carry the libation from the Spirit cup, usually water, outside and pour it on the ground:

To those who have gone before,

To those whose names live in our hearts and dance upon our lips,

To those whose names have been lost in the sea of time,

To those whose bones lie above and below the earth,

To those whose ashes have travelled on the winds,

We, the living, thank you for dining with us.

We, the living, bid you safe travels.

Ideally, the food would also be disposed of sacredly, either burned, buried or, traditionally, placed in running water. For me, it means leaving it out in the woods for critters, an offering of the bones of spirit-eaten food to other life in need. When I dispose of it, I do so with sacred intention.

Death is a part of the natural cycle we are all a part of and it’s healthy to find ways of acknowledging it as we celebrate the lives we lead. Our Dumb Suppers are portals that allow us, for one moment, whether we truly believe or not, to open up the part of ourselves that remembers the imagination of our childhoods. And we can believe that we might not know what comes after. And we can allow ourselves to speak words to the dead that would otherwise seem foolish.

            Many blessings to you and your family, both living and dead on this day. I have much gratitude to the Ancestors who lived, who opened the Way that we might walk this earth together. May we walk this earth softly, that those who come after us will speak our names in joy. May the peace and stillness of the season be with you. 

May the Ancestors walk with us, always.

[Article revamped from a post originally published October 31, 2012.]

I Knew a Boy

Me, the year I kissed my first boy, and my sister.

At my 20 year high school reunion, I heard the same news everyone always hears, that some of the classmates who were absent, were not able to be there because they had passed away. One of the deaths was a shock. He was one of my oldest friends, a childhood playmate. It hurt. It hurt to find out how he died.

Some people were surprised to discover the depth of my hurt. I get it. We stopped really socializing in the tidal influx of new students in Middle School and in High School, no one would have known we ever knew each other. We didn’t speak until the last semester of senior year, when we worked on the senior show together.

We had a moment.

It was always weird before then. When I got to high school I was trying to reinvent myself, to start over emotionally, in a sea of people who didn’t know my early struggles, who didn’t know my secrets. But he knew mine and I knew his. And it was weird.

He lived at the end of my block and we knew each other best when we were still learning who we were, still basking in the promise that we could be anything, anyone. That meant a lot to both of us. I knew a boy who was quick and creative, who was cleverly inventive. We would figure out what we wanted to play and he would figure out how, as if he had mapped the landscape of our neighborhood in his head.

We reenacted Star Wars often. I was Leia and T.J. was Han, because he had dark hair, and another boy, Derek, was Luke, because he had blond hair. We were crafty five year olds, using the back of a garage as a detention center and the secret room beneath a tree fort as a trash compactor. We didn’t know the whole story yet, but we made up our own versions.

He was clever and bright and thoughtful, and once he knew you, he was a good-natured trickster. He was also a boy who liked to do things for shock value, or because he had already deemed them to be another way to get it done, even if it wasn’t the same way everyone else was doing it. Or because he was owning something that was hard for him, before anyone could make fun of him for it. Little kids can be little bastards sometimes.

I know what his home life was like. I was there. He was sometimes in a dark mood, even when we were small, and it always seemed to come from somewhere outside of our wild pack of children running around. But even when he was upset, he was never mean to me. That matters.

In middle school, I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been instead of where I said I was going to be. And so was he. Our paths crossed and we acknowledged each other with surprise. See. in a crazy way, we grew up a family of about two dozen kids on our block. Even though we weren’t friends, we were cousins of a kind. He always kept my secret and I kept his. 

We didn’t speak again until the last semester of senior year. I was performing in the Senior Play and he was working stage crew and tech for it. We were on a short break.

“Why did we stop being friends?” he asked me backstage. I shrugged.

“We knew too much about each other. It was awkward.” He nodded thoughtfully. I could see the little boy in his face. Sometimes for me, the time and distance falls away so easily, and I squeezed his hand conspiratoriously. “We had a good run, playing at war in the summer time. We had fun.”

He laughed. “You were really good at rescuing prisoners from the fort,” he remembered.

“I never got caught.”

He said he got involved in the play because he wanted to be part of something fun before he graduated. He said he understood why I liked it, that it was good people. And, as was usual with him, the weight of what he didn’t say, the weight of what we knew about each other spoke volumes.

The last time we saw each other, I was walking my parent’s dog home on break. He waved and smiled at me, walking over to catch up for a moment. Leather, my parent’s dog, loved him. He was always good with animals, especially frightened ones. It wasn’t something he lost when his eyes flashed dark, so many thoughts fighting for dominance. The last thing I saw was him smiling, the boy I used to know flashing across that smile.

He’s the first boy I remember kissing. We were five years old and he was my first boyfriend. But I hadn’t seen Return of the Jedi yet. In my version of Star Wars, Leia dumped Han for Luke, and Derek became boyfriend #2. We were still five.

I hope you are at peace. I hope you are getting to do all of the exploring you always wanted to do. It’s a vast system of worlds. Happy hunting, TJ.

A Ritual of Endings

I have a friend that I see once a year, on top of a mountain for a week. She's a beautiful friend with a beautiful soul and she was one of my first teachers along this crazy spiritual journey.

These last few years, at the end of the gathering, she has taken a moment to hold my shoulders and look me in the eye. She holds my gaze and tries to say everything through them that can't pass her lips. And I nod to her, keeping my face steady, even though I want to brush her off.

That discomfort is a place of resistance and magic lives on the other side of it. So I push through it.

"In case I don't see you in the morning, I guess I'd better say goodbye. Bye," she says.

There is more unspoken in her words and I hope I understand them right. She's older, about an age where it's possible she won't return. I want to brush her off. Of course she'll be back. We all live forever, don't we? But I know we don't. So I nod and hold the sacred exchange.

The moment is not about me. I can deal with my emotions around it later. The moment is about how she feels about me, about us. So I smile soberly, still staring with her into that space where our lives intersect.

"I love you," I added this year, my own mortality ringing in my ears. I didn't have the courage to say it last time, but I didn't want to let the moment pass. We held that space and she nodded before walking away, disappearing into a celebratory crowd.

This year we had a second exchange in the morning as everyone dispersed. She came right for me and hugged me, reminding me again how grateful she was I survived the fire to return this year, and telling me she wished nothing but the best for my life and my future, weighting every word with a lifetime of thoughtfulness, just in case...

As a teacher myself now, I knew the best thing I could do was give her that last moment, in case it was. The least I could do for her was let her play out the ritual.

"I love you," I said again. She held my gaze, her hands on my shoulders, connecting us. And she took a deep breath.

"I love you, too," she answered, before walking away.

Ask Your Family for their Stories

The Wicker Cottage.

My mind is swimming with the new information I acquired while home after my Uncle’s death. There were so many stories I hadn’t heard before, unknown to me and my parents. My maternal grandmother, 83, was especially chatty, sharing stories about her own grandparents, who both worked for a local wealthy family in Lockport. Her grandpa was the groundskeeper for the Kenans and her grandma was their cook.

My grandpa’s cousin shared information about my mom’s father’s family that we didn’t have, solving the mystery of way my great-great grandfather was an only child. He was not an only child, just the only one who survived. My Uncle, older than my father and the brother they just lost, shared a letter full of memories of my grandparents, including the mother my father never knew and the grandmother I never met. My heart is full of joy at fleshing out her character and sorrow at never having known her.

This morning, in the wavering heat of the summer air, her ghost is almost tangible. My great-grandparents, the Rustons, grew vegetables during the war and Grandma Ruth and her sons helped with the weeding and growing. I can almost hear her laughter as I work on the neglected garden I abandoned while visiting my family.

I learned that the Rustons also had a cottage at Olcott, a small town on Lake Ontario. Where it used to sit is now a garage, attached to another cottage sitting beside two more. The trio used to belong to the Wicker brothers Hiram, William, and Frank. Hiram was my great-great-grandfather, and his cottage is still standing.

In my sadness, I am overwhelmed by the history. Standing at the edge of life, time is irrelevant and much that is unknown feels within reach. If I hadn’t asked, I’d never have known. I am grateful for the stories my Uncle Dave told me about his stint in the Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis this past Christmas. And I’m grateful that I was old enough to understand what a gift it was to receive all these stories I now hold.

I am a storyteller. And I am a storykeeper. They are swimming in my head and I am waiting for them to settle until they are part of my known histories.

Ask your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents how they met. What was their favorite music? Song? Book? What was the first film they remember seeing in a movie theater? What church did they attend? What were their first jobs? Who were their first heroes? What hobbies did they have or enjoy? Or wish they’d taken up? What do they say is the most important thing they learned about life?

Don’t let time and distance stand between you and knowing your history. Don’t be afraid to ask. You may be surprised to learn what you discover. This morning, I feel closer to a woman I never thought I’d have the chance to get to know. Today I am thinking about my Grandma Ruth and her son Dave, and hoping that they have been reunited in whatever comes after this life. 

The Eulogy I Wish I’d Given

Grandpa Dick and Grandma Donna's wedding day.

When my Grandpa passed, I didn’t know what his spiritual notions were. He was raised Roman Catholic and we all attended Sunday mass with my Great-Grandma Elsie when she visited for the summer… but I spent enough Sundays with Grandpa to know he didn’t attend church regularly. So, when he died, we requested a simple, generic service performed by the minister attached to the funeral home.

It was humorous. The poor retired minister was so excited to be behind a podium again that he threw every bible story he could into discussing death, including Jonah and the Whale. Yet he couldn’t keep my Grandpa’s name straight. The minister meant well, but he lost me when he started talking about how death was like the small white dead skin cells that fell out of his socks at night. I’m sure everyone behind me thought my silent laughter resembled tears. I hope my Grandpa was amused at the absurdity, too.

I was so overwhelmed with the loss, I didn’t think about getting up to speak. It never crossed my mind that I would look back later and wish the service had been more personal, more about my Grandpa. He was the reason we were all there. One of my cousins stood up to speak to what a wonderful and caring man he was. I wish I had thought to, been I fumble for live words enough, and my grief was so strong… we were just trying to get through it; the strange service held behind stranger walls.

Richard James Riddle

December 23, 1931 – March 25, 2004

My first Christmas, generation portrait.

My Grandpa was everything to me. He was every holiday meal, every Saturday lunch. He would come over at noon on the dot and teasingly ask me, “What’s for lunch today?” and then feign surprise when I answered with the same statement every week; bologna, cheese, mustard and potato chip (salt and vinegar was the best flavor to add to the combination).

He and my mom would sit in the kitchen together, the only time the smell of coffee permeated our house. He had his own stash in our cupboard, waiting for his weekly visit. I loved listening to them discuss the world, the way it worked. I loved the way they talked their way into hope. My Grandpa tried the best he could to see the bright end of things. And if there wasn’t one, well, we’d get through it.

When I was a little girl, I remember lots of summer afternoons at their house, playing in the cool basement and watching Grandma and Grandpa work their garden in the back yard, Grandma in her terrycloth one-piece and Grandpa in his shorts and sunglasses. In my memory they are summer, fresh vegetables and warm afternoons filled with the fragrant smell of roses. They were the spirit of growing things.

We would often have family dinners together and I believed my Grandpa to be an accomplished baker. Grandma cooked dinner and Grandpa cooked dessert. After each meal he would pull out his latest creation and go on about how he had even put it in a special box that he found, to make it nice for us. I was a bit innocent as a child and didn’t notice what a handy coincidence it was that he happened to have a Sara Lee Coffee Cake box the same day he made us one.

One night, he pulled out a cantaloupe and said he had grown it in one day, just for us. It took me a second. And I remember being afraid to contradict him, assuming I was wrong, because he would know, right? I told him matter-of-factly that cantaloupes couldn’t be grown in one day. It is the first memory I have of recognizing that the impish twinkle in his eye meant he was teasing or pulling my leg. There was a pause as the grown-ups realized I had accepted his stories all along, and there was some well-earned laughter at my expense. Thanks to Grandpa and his kitchen skills, one of my favorite desserts is a quarter slice of cantaloupe with a scoop of vanilla ice cream sitting in it.

After dinner the family would play Scat together. Grandpa would lend my siblings and me pennies from the jar on his dresser. At the end of the night, we would pay him back the pennies we’d started with, if we had any left. But the rest of our winnings were ours.

I called my Grandpa’s mom, Elsie, Grandma-from-Florida because I thought it was shorter than Great-Grandma. I remember forming that logic in my head. She spent her summers with my family and each year we would take the obligatory generational photo while she was visiting; Great-Grandma, Grandpa, mom, me and my siblings. Grandpa adored his mom- he’d call her “ma” with a smile on his face- as did everyone who knew her.

We spent some of those summer days at the Riddle cottage in Olcott on Lake Ontario. There was so much laughter, so much love and togetherness. I know it’s possible to be surrounded by joy and love, which is the greatest gift my family gave me. It’s the greatest gift my Grandpa gave me, loving me for who I was and as I was. I won’t settle for less than that, looking for the spirit of my Grandfather in the hearts of the people I meet.

Grandpa Dick had a beautiful Cadillac I loved riding in. Sometimes when we stayed overnight, he’d take us to his favorite diner for breakfast in the Caddy. All of the waitresses at the diner knew him. He would happily introduce us and the women would go on about how much he talked about us.

My entire life, I knew that my Grandpa loved me, even when he wasn’t with me. It’s a thing we take for granted sometimes, those relationships we build. Even now, a decade after his death, that love means everything to me.

When his cancer returned, I went home to spend time with him. I asked him for stories about his parents, pushing through the awkward moment where we both knew I was asking him because he was dying… because he might not recover and then there would be no answers. I picked up his prescriptions and took him some groceries one night, after copying some old family photos. That was the last night I saw him conscious and aware. And I learned that we shared a long-time favorite flavor of ice cream- black raspberry. I’ll never forget that last hug, just as strong and firm as every other hug he had ever given me.

There are so many of them, too many to ever count.

He was every Christmas morning, all of my life. I was 27 the last Christmas we had together. My nieces were opening their presents and the youngest said “Thank you, Great-Grandpa!” To which the middle child said, “Don’t call him that. It’s rude!” My Grandpa smiled and said, “Why? That’s what I am.”

And that’s who he was.

Outside his parent's store.

Richard James Riddle was born in 1931 in Lockport, New York. He had a brother and a sister. His parents owned a small general store and his father worked at the local Radiator factory. He was a young boy when World War II began and he later spent some time in the Navy. He was married twice, had one daughter, and three step-children. His second wife, my Grandma Donna, was the love of his life. He outlived her by two years. They loved to travel. They loved to gamble. They either won or broke even at the tables. They brought the fortune and sunshine with them when they travelled.

He was the father of my mother, and father to my aunt and uncles. He became a father to my own, and to all of their friends who became my family. My life is peppered with stories of him dropping in on my mother’s friends and helping them out when they were in need. At the end of his life he was a good friend to one of my favorite high school teachers, who lived a stone’s throw away from him after he moved.

I can see the ripple of his time on this earth stretching out in the wake of his loss. It ripples still. I feel the joy he taught me when the sun warms my skin. And when I sit quietly in the woods, I can hear the sound of his voice in the wind as it blows through the trees. He lives on in my stories and in the memories of those who loved him.

What is remembered, lives.

What is remembered never dies.

[Revamped post originally published March 14, 2012.]

Elsie Elizabeth Durant Riddle

My great-grandparents at Niagara Falls.

My Great-Grandma Elsie was a summer solstice baby. She was born on June 21, 1904. She died January 9, 1994, my senior year of high school. This past solstice, as I stood in a dark wood surrounded by thick clouds of fireflies beneath a star-lit sky, I sang Happy Birthday to her. The memory of Elsie was strong with me- the cool feel of her skin, the sound of her laugh, and the crooked way her smile would lift up on one side before stretching across her face.

I realized she would have been 110 years old. There was something to that moment, as if it made missing her less painful, knowing that she likely would have expired naturally by now. There are no more lost years we could have had together, like the ones her disease robbed us of before she died. I still miss her, but I hold her close.

Her smile and laugh lit up the room. Her love filled my heart with warmth like the sun in the sky. She was special and I cannot celebrate summer without thinking about her. I was born nine months after my Great-Grandpa Harold Riddle died of a heart attack and the day I came into the world would have been their fifty-second wedding anniversary.

I don’t know anyone who didn’t love her. When I started high school, one of the band teachers, Mr. Allison, sought me out just to tell me how much she meant to him. During his formative years, she watched him, and he seemed to love her as much as I did. In that moment, my world shifted. I understood how one person can ripple through people’s lives without realizing it. Elsie was special. She was a pip.

Meeting her for the first time.

All of my childhood, my Grandma-from-Florida (that’s where they retired to so that’s what I called her) would come and live with us for the summer months. Every time I bite into a ripe sun-warmed strawberry, the sweetness I take in reminds me of those shared memories. There was a room in our small house that had been the upstairs bathroom. When the bathroom was moved downstairs, they left the toilet upstairs, a smart choice for a house with small children. This extra room was where she slept, right next to my bedroom. I used to sit on the edge of her bed while she dressed in the morning, slipping on her hose and open-toed cork sandals, to go with her culottes and the sweater she would throw over her shoulders.

Her touch was always cool and soothing in the summer heat. She tried to explain to me how it was much hotter where she lived, so she was cold during the summer. My small world couldn’t comprehend anything hotter than 100 degree heat.

            My Grandma Elsie was one of my first pen pals, encouraging me with my writing. When I got glasses in third grade, I was nervous because only a couple other kids in my class had them, and they were picked on. She wrote me about how absolutely no one had them when she was in school except for her, and it would be okay. She always said I could ask her anything.

Us again, 8th grade for me.

Every Christmas at my grandparents’ house, we would pass the phone around to talk to her, long before I was old enough to use the phone myself. I remember the wonder I had at her voice on the phone, sounding so close to me, as if I had expected the miles between us to manifest through the receiver. Science is magic to the mind of a child.

She was a practicing Catholic and she believed in it. I sing Ave Maria to her all the time. I know that somewhere, wherever she is, she hears it. In the years after, through my genealogical work, I discovered more about her than I knew in life.

Her parents were George Francis Durant and Emma Louise Burnah who were married in 1889. He was sixteen and she was twenty. The Durants were French-Canadian; both of George’s parents had emigrated from Quebec. The surname Burnah has been hard to place and has been found in a variety of forms such as Burnah, Burneh, Burmah, Bruneh, Brunet, and Burnett. I can follow the Durants, LaRoches, and Lavallees into Quebec and France. The Burnahs remain a mystery I dream of solving for Elsie. I want to know her mother. I want to know where her mother came from.

Her father George was a laborer, living in both New York and Vermont for work. George and Emma had seven living children, of which Elsie was the youngest. I remember her telling me that she was the baby, and she teased us that the baby was never spoiled- followed by her impish laughter. Elsie’s family lived in Burlington, Vermont before landing in Lockport, New York, a town along the Erie Canal.

She married Harold Riddle in 1924 at the age of 20. He was 21, the son of a farmer, and he worked as a chauffeur, driving motor truck and later working as a die setter at the local Radiator factory. They had three children together: Harold Jr. who was called “Sonny,” my grandpa Richard, and their daughter Donna.

Sonny was a bit of trouble through most of his life and I know he caused my great-grandma heartache. I only knew him as birthday cards, sent faithfully every year, singed “Love, Uncle Sonny.” He spent his early years in prison outside San Luis Obispo for bank robbery and was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He lost his legs to gangrene due to infections from his time on the run.

Great-grandma Elsie and my Grandpa Dick would often talk about Sonny as a young boy, telling censored stories from his childhood. But there was a truth to the quiet way his name was spoken, and the absence of him in family stories and the family time that included us children. I am old enough now to know how it feels to have things sit so painfully in you that you cannot bear it words. I know how you can love someone so deeply, even though their choices are hurtful to others, and you cannot condone the actions they take.

For a time, to make ends meet, my great-grandparents moved to Somerset where they owned a small convenient store and worked a farm for food while renting out their home in Lockport. While they lived there, my Poppa Harold lived part-time with family in Lockport, working at Harrison Radiator. Later, for a time, they shared a duplex with my mother and her parents, having their own space on one side. They retired to St. Petersburg, Florida, which is where my Poppa passed away.

Before he died, my Grandpa told me that his parents loved each other very much and that Harold doted on Elsie. His father was easy-going unless one of the children sassed their mother or talked back to her and then he would rise like a bear to her defense. I remember hearing her say, “You grandfather and I…” to my mom around the kitchen table. My brother remembered him. I knew all I needed to know from the way she spoke about him, the way her tone revealed how little her love for him had faded. I remember feeling wistfully like I had missed out on knowing a great man.

I discovered on the census reports that Elsie’s parents lived with them for most of her marriage, until they died. My mom said she declared that she would never live with her children. She didn’t think it was fair. And she never did.

There was one year she didn’t stay with us. She stayed with my Grandparents instead. My mom explained that she was ill and they wanted a quieter space for her. I heard the whispered stories during the summer of her forgetting where she was, who my Grandpa was, of her getting up at 3 a.m. in a panic, pulling her sweater on backwards over her nightgown, because she had to get lunch ready for the children. That was the year I learned the word Alzheimers.

She stayed in Florida after that and was moved into a nursing home. My great-Aunt Donna lived nearby. My mom and grandpa went down multiple times to visit her, but we never saw her again. Her mind descended quickly. She died on in 1994 after complications from a hip surgery she got from falling. She was 89 years old.

I have one recipe from her, for Swiss Steak. It was written in the early 1960s on an index card with a birdhouse decorating it. My dad said she used to make this all the time, and it was his favorite dish. I copied it out, exactly as she wrote it, line for line.

[side 1]

Round steak

cut in serving size pieces

sprinkle both sides with flour

pound flour in steak with

rolling pin or heavy utensil

brown on both sides in hot fat

I use oil.  place in small

roaster or cake pan.  Slice a

couple onions place in pan

salt +/ pepper meat + onions.

pour over tomatoe juice, or regularly canned

tomatoes, or a can of tomato soup (over)

[side 2]

delute with ½ can of water if you

use the soup.  Bake in oven

350 degrees about 1 hr 15 min.

or until Tender.  Turn meat

over when about half done.

can be cooked in electric

fry pan.  But has to be

watched so it doesn’t burn or

stick.

My First Imaginary Friend was a Ghost

When I was a little girl, I had five imaginary friends. But one of them was a ghost. Her name was Amy.

I remember waking in the morning, and she’d be sitting on the end of my bed, waiting for me. I called her Amy, because I had trouble saying her full name. I had a speech impediment as a child. She didn’t seem to mind. My adult brain keeps trying to fill her full name in from scattered memories. Amalia? Amelia? Emmeline?

She was a shadow in the house while I dressed, ate breakfast, and brushed my teeth. We didn’t speak inside but her presence was a comfort to me. We walked to school together every day. She always wore the same outfit, a dress that could have come from Little House on the Prairie, a pale blue dress with tiny flowers on it. Her hair hung in one long braid down her back. It was a light brown color. Her eyes were blue. And always, every day, her feet were bare.

We walked together in the snow, my breath hanging in the air in front of me. Not hers. We would walk together all the way to the corner of Grand and Prospect where the crossing guard stood. Amy would stay on my side of Prospect. She couldn’t cross the street. She didn’t know why. Every day, after school, she would be waiting for me there.

I remember knowing enough to hold my tongue until we were out of range of other kids. And I just accept it was true. Why do I believe she was a ghost? Partly because of all the other spectral encounters I have had in my later life that I know are true. But also because, of all my imaginary friends, Amy was the only one who I couldn’t change or control. She always wore the same thin dress. I couldn’t dress her for the appropriate season like I could the others. She was always barefoot. I wish I remembered the conversations we had, for I know we spoke together while we were walking.

I can’t believe I almost forgot that she was a spirit.

Children, untainted, untrained, unschooled, are open vessels to the world. I know a lot of parents who say their children talk about who they were in a past life, or bring up details on historical events they couldn’t yet know about. There are even children who give details about their imaginary friends that, after research, turn out to be people who had really existed. Kids see things we don’t. According to developmental psychologists, when children reach eight years-old, they begin to conform to what they have to believe and think in order to be part of our culture. And one of the first things they let go of is their belief in magic, and their imagination.

We did the same thing when we were kids. As we age we tell ourselves that what we remember couldn’t possibly have happened the way we remember it. And we alter our own origin stories. We tell ourselves that we couldn’t possibly remember what we did when we were four years old, that we must be making it up. But we must remember that just because we didn’t have the language we needed to accurately identify a thing, doesn’t mean that what we remember is wrong. It’s just out of focus.

I have been both cursed and blessed with a long memory for things that emotionally stirred me. I believed in magic as a child. I remember not speaking to Amy out loud in front of others, even though I didn’t speak out loud with my other imaginary friends. I just had conversations with them in my head. But with Amy, I remember thinking other people would not be able to see her. I remember subsequently hiding myself from the world because I felt I was different. I remember how disconnected I felt when I closed myself off to the natural world.

I believe that act was what caused my decades of unexplainable loneliness. The more I work towards reconnecting into the land I live on and within, the more I chip away at that dark place inside me and the less alone I feel. And the more I accept that the quirky life I remember as a little girl was more real than the one of concrete and asphalt.

When I was a little girl, I had five imaginary friends. But one of them was a ghost. Her name was Amy.

Family Tree Stories

I was lucky enough to have multiple grandparents. There were seven in total. Some of them were part of my immediate family, some were names on my tree, and some were unknown to me, having died before I was old enough to put my world together in thoughts and memories. It seems to me that sometimes, in our grief, we deal with it by keeping stories precious to us close to the breast. Or we keep memories quiet out of deference to those who come into families after the fact, lest they feel excluded. It’s understandable, but sad for those like me, who don’t share in those memories.

I might not have known them, but there were other family members in my life that did. There are others still alive who remember them. I only recently realized that the older I get, the smaller that group becomes. If I don’t remember, how will those who come into the family after me? I’d like to be able to say more about my father’s mother to my nieces and nephew than, “She died when your grandpa was five.”

I can tell you all the pertinent information about my family tree. I know who was born when and where and who they married. I mostly know when they died and some, how. But that doesn’t tell me about them. Knowing what my birth date is doesn’t tell anyone anything about who I am. What would I want to know from those who do remember them? What would you want to know?

Lives Drawn from Memory

• Family Member: name
• What profession(s) did they have?
• Do you know of any vacations they took; any places of the world they visited?
• What kinds of things did they enjoy doing in their leisure time? Did they have any noticeable hobbies (needlework, gardening, knitting, carpentry, model-making, etc.)?
• How many children did they have? How many boys? How many girls? What were their ages (i.e. how often were they having them)?
• In their lifetime, where were the places they lived?
• Did they serve in the military? What branch? What was their title?
• Describe things you did together when you spent time with them.
• What kind of food did they like to eat?
• What was their favorite season of the year?
• Did they play and/or enjoy sports? Which one(s)?
• What was their favorite holiday?
• Do you remember attending church with them? Or them attending church? Do you know what church they attended?
• Did they drink tea or coffee? Both? Did they have a regular cocktail? Do you know what their favorite drink was?
• Did they listen to music? Did they have a favorite kind of music? A favorite artist?
• Did they have any known addictions or flaws?
• Did they have a busy/active social life?
• Were they members of any clubs or lodges?
• Do you remember them ever being seriously ill?
• What kinds of foods did they enjoy? What types of things did you eat when/if you ate at their house?
• Did they cook?
• What did they do with their time after dinner and before bed?
• Did they read? Did they have a favorite kind of book (romance, history, murder/mystery, science fiction)?
• Did they wear glasses? Hearing aids?
• Did they have tattoos?
• When you think of them, what style of clothing do you associate with them?
• What age were you when you first met them? Did you always know them?
• Did they seem happy most of the time?
• Describe briefly a favorite memory you have of/with them.

These are meant to be prompts. Add your own questions. Tailor them to fit your family. Pass them out to your parents, your aunts and uncles, and your grandparents. Ask them to answer the questions about their parents and grandparents, even great-grandparents if they knew them. Take the information you receive and compile a history that gives flesh to their ghosts.

Tell their stories. Share them. Pass them down through your generations. Whisper the names of your loved ones long after they are gone. Tell the stars their stories if there is no one left to share them with. What is remembered lives, and never truly dies.

Spirit Dreaming

I often get spirit visitations in dream world, which is fairly common. It’s easier for our Western minds to be open to seeing someone we know has passed in a world that we expect to be irrational. The spirits always appear different than their surroundings, as if they are watchers of my subconscious theatre, swept up in the story but not of it. They appear to me as if made of a separate quality of film overlaid onto that of the dreaming.

When I see a spirit, I take notice of the things that seem to pull my focus. They are likely to be relevant, whether I understand them or not. Sometimes it’s a word they say or the way they say it. Sometimes it is an item they hold. Other times it’s a reflection of myself in their eye. I bring these images and thoughts out of dream world and mull them over in my meditations.

Last Year’s Dream

I am walking a path in the wood. The forest is old and the trees are thick and tall. There is hardly any underbrush. Our village is in this wood. At the heart of the village is a large stone table. I approach it, alone. There are two people laying on the stone table, head to feet, a man and a woman. They are both naked. They are both old with white hair. They are flickering to fill the shape of themselves and I know they are ancestors of mine.

They take turns speaking, but I only hear their words in my head. On the stone table, their lips do not move. When I look at her I hear seagulls and I smell the cloying scent of sod and sea spray. Could this be a mother of my mothers from Ireland? I look at him and I feel the heft of an axe in my hand, in a younger wood than this one.

They are speaking in my head, overlapping now. I was chosen because I can hear them. The old man is crying; he never thought he would see this done. His relief is palpable. I hold his hand and I tell him that it is okay. I assure him that I’ll see it through. He sighs and passes on, his flesh and bones turning to stardust. Other stardusted spirits and people from my village in the woods gather around the stone table for the funeral.

I am standing at the back of the crowd and the old woman shows me a picture in my head. She is digging up an ancient drumming shield in a place I am familiar with. I think I am watching it backwards. I think she is burying it. There is a secret around this object. It is important to unbury it, even though I don’t know what the darkness around it is.

When I leave my village it is dusk and the shield is slung over my shoulder. In the dream I think of it as “her weapon.” The drumming shield is octagon shaped, with slightly curved edges that makes it’s shape like a bowl. When I strike it, it sounds like a drum. There is a small circle in the northwest quadrant and a crescent around it in the southeast quadrant of the shield…

…then I am standing on a ship. It is modern in appearance, but feels ageless and ancient at once. I see a friend of mine on deck. In the real world when I had this dream, my friend was on walkabout in the Celtic Isles. He does not recognize the face I wear in the dream but when I speak to him he sees me and gives me the biggest hug. I tell him that I am about to fix an 800 year-old wrong. He tells me to journey well.

Bits of the dream cling to me in the waking world, like puzzle pieces that would fit together if only I could see the larger pattern. They are wheels within wheels... the immediate pull to think on my maternal line... the secret with 8 sides... an 800 year-old wrong… the feel of being handed a quest. An 800 year-old wrong would put the ancestral generation somewhere in the 1100s. I meditate on the past, seeking shadows and blocks in the energy flow as I drift backwards through the bloodstream.

I trust in the dream, that there is something there, some secret unknown, lingering in the recesses of my ancestral memory. I understand that it may always remain unknown to me. Just because I don’t know what caused a shadow on the energy flow, doesn’t mean I am incapable of clearing it out so that the energy may move freely again… and perhaps remove the larger hamster-wheel patterns my family has been repeating.

I make offerings to the ancestors to let go of the things they held onto in death. I make offerings to appease the wrongs the ancestors of mine had done. I open my heart to forgiveness and embrace my ancestors for whatever lives they might have led. Good or bad, I would not be here without them. That is the comfort I inhale and the acceptance I exhale.

What is remembered lives. What is remembered never truly dies. What is dead lives on within me.