Strongheart: June 16th: Our Family's Ceremony For My Mother

My mama and me shortly after her 92nd birthday, June 2019

My mother with her 3 grandsons, Matt, Kevin, and Brian, April 1995

Our family sits in circle for our sharing time.

Ron and myself with my oldest son, Brian, and youngest son, Matthew. My son Kevin was available by video call.

On Wednesday, June 16th our family gathered at River View Cemetery in southwest Portland to bury my mother, the boys' grandmother, and great-grandmother to 6 year old Oliver, 3 year old Eleanor, and 3 year old Ethan. Two bald eagles danced together in the distant sky shortly after we arrived. The loveliness of the day, the cemetery, the trees and the view, and all that we shared together was a beautiful gift.

Our little ceremony and honoring of my mother at this time was small, just including my husband, my three sons and daughter-in-law Marita, and grandchildren. Matthew held his phone Facetiming with Kevin so that he could participate from Victoria, along with a couple brief appearances by little Ethan. A larger memorial with our greater community of friends and family will follow at some point as the risks of Covid continue to decrease and safely gathering together inside can occur.

* * * * *

Everyone has their own unique journey of grieving in the aftermath of the death of a loved one. This was especially true for me given the trauma, losses, and, in the end, the love that my mom and I were finally able to share over the course of the last years of my mother's life.

It took me nearly a year before I knew that the time had come to bury my mom. As soon as I searched for a green-friendly cemetery, I found River View. Once my husband and I visited, I immediately knew that this was what I was looking for. Someday, Ron and I will also be buried here.

Gratefully, there was support to come up with what would be engraved on my mother's basalt tablet. The challenge was to concisely, and with love and compassion, reflect the truth. Yes, there was this first mother whose unaddressed trauma caused great harm to herself and everyone around her throughout most of her life. And then there was this second mother who, so late in her life, was able to discover and open her heart to love. And this was when my mama became more and more of who she really was. How to speak to these truths was my heart's challenge.

Ultimately, Ron and my three sons all helped me with what will be engraved in her memory:

Nancy Moesta Strong

June 5, 1926 - June 20, 2020

She overcame much to embody an

awakening heart and beautiful soul,

radiating the miracle, beauty,

and power of love.

* * * * *

Part of our ceremony was sitting in circle and having a sharing time. Six year old great-grandson Oliver immediately jumped in and raised his hand to go first. He smiled as he spoke about the candy he always got from the stash of chocolates that Grammie always had available at great-grandma Nan's. And Oliver remembered eating dinner at her assisted living and getting to have ice cream. Three year old Eleanor wanted to go next and shared about unicorns. Such sweethearts.

Brian, Kevin, and Matthew shared honestly about some happy and some sad memories related to their grandmother. Ron also spoke truthfully, touching into his memories of both the really hard experiences that he witnessed, and the ones which were such an extraordinary gift. I, too, needed to speak to and honor both mothers ― the one who wasn't able to love and the one who opened her heart. In doing so, it was also very important for me to give voice to the extraordinary gifts that I have received, and from both mothers, which have profoundly transformed me and birthed my passion for living a life rich in compassion, kindness, and love.

As we went around the circle, there were tears and laughter, honesty and tenderness, listening and love. And as I shared, I was very mindful of my tiny grandchildren and wanting them to feel supported, witnessed, loved. More than once, I let go of what I thought would happen to allow to emerge what needed to happen ― like when Oliver wanted to be the first one to share in our circle, and when he also wanted to be the first one to sprinkle his great-grandmother's ashes into the ground. And the children weren't afraid and were engaged, as best as 6 and 3 year olds can be, in this process of honoring the life and the death of my mother and their great-grandmother. My heart was full. And remains full.

And so my mother was returned to the Mother. No urn. No casket. Just ashes into the Earth. And then covering those ashes with more of the earth. One by one by one, we each took turns burying my mama. And we did so with love, connected heart-to-heart.

After generations of suffering alone and in silence, for many years now our family has been learning how to do life, and death, differently. At the root of each and every gradual change, awakening, healing, and transformation is love. Love and Grace. Grace and Love.

* * * * *

Poems that I read during my sharing time:

When Death Comes

by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

*`*`*

For Death

by John O'Donohue

From the moment you were born,

Your death has walked beside you.

Though it seldom shows its face,

You still feel its empty touch

When fear invades your life,

Or what you love is lost

Or inner damage is incurred.

Yet, when destiny draws you

Into these spaces of poverty,

And your heart stays generous

Until some door opens into the light,

You are quietly befriending your death;

So that you will have no need to fear

When your time comes to turn and leave.

That the silent presence of your death

Would call your life to attention,

Wake you up to how scarce your time is

And to the urgency to become free

And equal to the call of your destiny.

That you would gather yourself

And decide carefully

How you now can live

The life you would love

To look back on

From your deathbed.

*`*`*

Don't Hesitate

By Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, be very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

*`*`*

Don't run away from grief, o soul,

Look for the remedy inside the pain,

because the rose came from the thorn

and the ruby came from a stone.

― Rumi

*`*`*

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

*`*`*

Your body is away from me

But there is a window open

from my heart to yours.

From this window, like the moon

I keep sending news secretly.

― Rumi

* * * * *

Such a beautiful question to embody: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?

Bless us all as we experience the loss of our loved ones. And, hopefully, along the way we will learn how to increasingly open our hearts to befriending death as our constant companion reminding us of the preciousness of life.