Roots

My cousin, mother, grandmother, uncle

Two family deaths changed the way I viewed the holidays this year. And got me thinking about what is solid in this temporal and unpredictable world.

They were not immediate family, in fact both were grand aunts. First, on my birthday no less, I heard of the death of Zena, my (postmodern) grand aunt by my maternal uncle's ex-marriage. 

It's been years since I've seen her. My single mother had moved us to NYC, and Zena's intense floor-barre ballet was very grounding for me. The discipline has deeply informed so much of my life.

But over the years the family changed and moved, expanding and contracting as families do over decades. Though I have seen my uncle and cousins, Zena was only, sadly, a fond memory, a checkpoint. Divorce is funny like that, making ex-relatives of people who for a child are de facto family.

And then she died. I said my goodbyes at home, thanked God for her influence, saved the obit for the family file.

Things settled down, we had a lovely thanksgiving. December rolled around, requisite viruses and allergies hit. Santa was behind. And I got the next call. My maternal grandmother's sisters had been in a car accident. So far they were okay, sort of.

Gerry had picked up Wanda from the airport and was dropping her off at home. They got to the driveway and Wanda was trying to get her bag out of the trunk. Gerry thought she was done and began to back up, bumping Wanda, making her fall in the drive. Wanda shouted and managed to get herself back up. Gerry had opened her door and unbuckled, fearing for her sister.

And then the smallest biggest thing happened.

Gerry slammed her foot down to stop the car, but hit the accelerator instead of the brake. The car flew into the yard, and Gerry was thrown across the street, under a tree.

Wanda thought she was gone. She ran over and Gerry was out cold. Wanda kept telling her she was okay, that she hadn't run her over, terrified that Gerry would die thinking she'd killed her little sister. When the ambulance left, my 80 year old aunt who had been bumped by a car and fallen in the drive, got into her car and drove to the hospital.

When she got there Gerry was blinking and talking. Maybe Gerry heard her and knew Wanda was okay. Things degenerated over the course of the following week. Family arrived from near and far. She was taken off of her respirator, put in hospice across the hall, and finally, after three days, died.

She and Wandy and my grandmother were like triplets of love. The violence and her relative youth made her loss all the more shocking. She was 82, but she had been a P.E. teacher, and longevity on that side is expected. Their mother got her license renewed at 92!

Wanda's Pecan PieMy cousin arranged for us to go, battling holiday flight madness. She and I are close like the sisters are. We packed in a daze, texting each other. We realized we had to go for longer than we thought in order to walk our grandmother and Wanda through a few days following the funeral. We hugged our husbands and children, and flew together to Houston, then to Lubbock and drove finally to Plainview, TX.

Plainview is a funny place to have family. Our great grandmother arrived from Alabama as a child in a covered wagon after the Civil War. It's all cotton and cattle. Very small. I never expected to be back so soon after last summer's reunion. 

A discipline. A reunion. A funeral.

What does it mean to be rooted? What does it look like for you to be truly rooted in something? What is your deep inner strength, something from which you draw? All of the family stories I grew up with are a rooting thing for me. Not religion per se, for me at least, but certainly faith is another. Nation and history are a most obvious ways to describe roots. The discipline of floor-barre, or any practice.

I used to envy people for whom one rooting thing was simple and obvious, giving them purchase against life's more slippery parts. Now I think I was missing a vital part of the picture. Though sometimes people seem to miss the flubs in their personal story, and can even seem to be flying flags on castles made of sand, I suspect most of us do have more of a "warts and all" understanding of our own narratives. 

Listening to the family stories, good and bad, I find I heard more with the vulnerability that loss creates in all of us. Perhaps more was said. Perhaps I saw a more even picture of each of the people with whom I share so much history.

My mother, cousin and I conspired to go to the cemetery to photograph the older graves. It was cold, having snowed a little. There was the scent of cattle manure on the wind, so many geese overhead. And there was a sense of irony. Three Yankees, New Yorkers, traipsing through the cemetery, each with all the names of our history burned in our minds, stories floating around as cousins, aunts and uncles were found.

We got my mother's mother's parents. And then we got her parents, from the covered wagon. And it was almost electrical, because it was pure chance, perhaps. I had asked for them to help us find them, quite fervently. We made one last pass through the older area. The light was fading, and we were leaving the next day.

And then there they were.

The two hardest ones with the least information. And we got to stand there in some awe. You could have knocked me over with a feather. We got dates, and the cemetery had their birthplaces in their online database when I got home. 

What I found in the face of all of this tragedy, history, quiet time appreciating "visiting" with the 80 year old set, bonding with my cousin, my mother, and our broader family in this loss, walking the cemetary and finding the gravestones of the legends of our family stories, was really just more life. Richer, more layered, fraught, joyful. Life.

I came back so grateful for having all of these remarkable people influencing me, whether by story or experience, as standards or warnings. The depth of the experience has made me very interested in further exploring the hushed parts of my maternal family history. Plantations and slavers, Choctaws, pioneers, drinkers, preachers. I found that no one was completely saint or sinner, to put it in Plainview-style terms, but there are always shades of grey, historical context, true evil and real heroics. I learned that seeing people's gifts and strengths and carrying them with me is very, very powerful. I learned that sometimes there are sad skeletons that are best acknowledged with compassion and breathed away, denying denial, if you will.

How is your personal story, your narrative, informing your life? What things make you stronger, and what parts might it be time to acknowledge and let go, not denying, but allowing to die for you so they no longer have power over you, and are not unwittingly passed on. What pieces might become part of your personal mission statement? What might you explore in terms of discipline, history, spiritual practice or even nation that might act as resources for you? What do you find roots you?

Comments

[Miranda]

I saw quote on Twitter this morning and had to share. I think it relates in a parallel way to where I'm trying to go with this piece... "Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together." ~ Pema Chödrön