Memories: Each Day Radiant with New Meaning

A year of markers:
Her memorial, people spilling out onto the sidewalk.
Thanksgiving and Christmas.
New Years.
Valentine’s Day.
March 13th, Julia’s birthday.
The court case, finally appearing and closed.
(The law can be so whimsical.)
Someplace in there, the estate finally settled.

Then, there are the markers of the heart.
From the No! and curses
to tenderness and tears.
The Bay of Rage and Valley of Fears.
Endless terrains to transverse.

Four-year-old Maggie led the way.
“Sometimes, I can feel Grammy Julia’s heart in my heart.”
Grammy Julia is dead, she knows that.
But Grammy Julia still loves her.
She knows that, too.

§Goodnight Little Girl of My Dreams [sing and play]§

From these markers we move into the story of the Water Ceremony I created to honor the loss of four mothers and two sisters in my extended family of friends at Clear Lake. We met at Kelsey Creek on a close friend’s family farm. We held our Water Ceremony in a place in the stream we call the Sulfur Cave. I took my painted Water Banner to float in the creek and some hand-held clay sculptures I’d made—scepters and dousing rods.

Here at Clear Lake, I commemorated Julia’s anniversary.
They do that in Ghana.
They do that in Spain.
They do that in Tibet.
We did that here, this year.
A week of remembrance.
A week of acquired sisterhood.
Remembering to remember to remember.
Re-membering when the member is severed.
Remembering the water of life.

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