A woman here at the base, Dee Dee, is holding potlatch at the end of the month for her son. I am grateful that I am astute enough to have picked up on body language and tone to realize that this was not, in this case, similar to a confirmation or a Quinceañera, and didn't get all excited about learning something new and begin to grill her, the way I am wont to do. Because, sure enough, it's not.
For two nights, there will be singing and dancing around the furs, followed by a feast. On the third night, they will honor the people who helped her son. So, she will give gifts to the man who built her son's coffin and to the man who built her son's cross and the woman who prepared her son's body.
He died in 2004. I don't know if this is a yearly ritual or if it has taken this long or ... what. Yes, I could research it, and perhaps I should. But I won't. Not this time. There are some things I don't need to know clinically, rationally, intellectually. If it happens that I can ask her without being offensive, I will. But the death of a child...You walk carefully, there, even after six years. I do know it sounds beautiful. It sounds healing.
1 comment:
Wow.
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