We’ve been so wrapped up in claims and our kitchen remodel that it has been hard to think about much else. Stuff everywhere and no time to take care of anything but work makes life a little narrow.
Last Sunday I got a call that my sister-in-law’s baby brother had died, he was 44 years old. We knew that he’d been in the hospital due to a heart condition, some surgery done, released and then staph had set in. Things had gone bad but they were still hoping that he’d recover. Then he didn’t.
Yesterday we went to the memorial service. We knew Jimmy, saw him on occasion as extended families do, but never really got to know him. I’d ask about the family and knew that he was an EMT, but didn’t give it too much thought.
What we learned was a lesson in humility, if only we had gotten to know Jimmy, he could have taught us some things. He was an EMT for the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, he married a Hopi woman who had grown children and they were married for 4 years. These children got up and talked about Jim, the only dad they had ever known. Other co-workers talked about his working and caring for the Hopi.
I would have loved to learn from him some of the medicine, some of their teachings, but I never gave him much of my time. We were too busy with our lives and our own selfish little concerns.
The service was much like any Christian service; the songs, the bible quotes and the talk about the “pie in the sky”. At the end of the service it was announced that there would be one last song. I thought, OK, just sit thru this and then we can talk with the family. But instead 3 Hopi men went onto the stage and said that they would sing a song about traveling and the afterlife. They sang in the Hopi tongue so I couldn’t understand the words but it was so moving. I felt as if they were somehow guiding his spirit and that we were a part of the whole picture; the earth, the sky, everything.
I remembered when my youngest son was married, he didn’t want any religion in the ceremony except for the Apache prayer. I thought back on how it made me feel one with everything around me. Then thought how this song was so comforting, so right, so relevant to the moment.
Later as I drove back home I was thinking about the song and how it took me and shook me to my core. I’m an unbeliever in religion but here religion was a comfort, a belief that I know nothing about. I can’t believe in many of the ideas but yet it was still a comfort. I’m not sure of where I stand.
I’m also saddened with myself. Here someone who probably has no Indian blood goes and just fits in but I, who have blood from each paternal and maternal sides have never bothered to learn about my heritage.
When my dad died, 4 years ago, I told him, very quietly, that he was free to go to the Great Hunting Ground in the sky. I wonder now if he heard what I told him, he the devout Christian that he was. Was he appalled at my final words? Or did the Indian in him give him peace? I’ll never know but at this point I don’t know what I’ll do about my own conflicts.
