If I die unexpectedly then take a vote among my friends and family on where I should be buried. It might be illegal but consider slipping my body into the Columbia River. If that happens then I'll do my best to turn my seven billion billion billion atoms into that many wild salmon and smash through the Grand Coulee Dam. I hope that I can be the gorgeous disaster that carries my tribe back to the centuries before electricity. If that burial is not to be then tie my body to the base of a pine tree. As that tree grows, my bones will rise above the reservation. Maybe generations of birds will build nests among my ribs. If that ceremony is not possible then bury me in the Catholic cemetery somewhere near my mother and father's graves. I don't need to lie next to them. Our souls will travel through the soil toward one another. In the afterlife, they'll reach for me. I'll curl into them and become their newborn again.
As I’m beginning to ponder my final days, the poignancy of the last stanza, the acceptance and then the magic of reincarnation when souls meet. Thank you.
Unlike you I have no ground that belongs to my ancestors. My family’s been on the run since the inquisition, most probably for centuries before. My family does have it’s own myths.bIn the absence of ancient ground that has bore the communal weight of my history, I find those places where the earth speaks to me and tells me the stories that need to be known. Always a surprise, always transports me to the time of the story, and always changes my place in this space we all share.
Wonderful to read this sitting in my kitchen with a half decent view of the Columbia River.