Reflections of a Walk

When I was 15 years old, my mom decided to take me for a walk to have a deep talk with me. We went for a ride, down the country road we lived on and to the little store that also had a makeshift post office. Essentially, this was all that made up that little town called 'Culleoka,' (which means Sweet Water in Choctaw) where we lived for about a year in total. It was just before Fall, and she ended up stopping at this little cemetery called Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery.

There are several graves there that have well-taken care of headstones, and go back generations all the way to around the Civil War era. She stopped, got out of the car she'd been teaching me how to drive standard (stickshift) in and said get out - let's go for a walk. So, I eased the door open and being fascinated by Halloween and Gothic things, I wasn't really afraid to go walk with my mom through a graveyard.

Besides, it wasn't even dusk - and if there were any ghosts, I wasn't afraid of them, having seen my first ghost in Oregon at Heceta Head Lighthouse when I was 9. I knew certain things innately and had a keen sense of intuition and discernment from childhood. I don't call myself clairvoyant, or psychic or anything special. I'm just very in tune, and I realized that early in life so seeing Rue on the Coast in Oregon wasn't so odd - it was more just confirmation. Many other paranormal experiences would occur throughout my life, so it wasn't really that strange to me, and neither was this offer to walk through the midsts of the dead with my Native American mother.

She had an interesting talk with me, sharing insights about life and her own philosophies, and asked me what it was I wanted to do for myself. She made it clear that whether or not one actually winds up six feet under or not isn't that point, as some do prefer cremation, or burial at sea...but what matters is that we all end up in the same state eventually, and how we live our lives while we have them is what shapes up the time to being worthwhile at all.

I think of this moment as a core memory before I went onto young adulthood - one of the few moments that I could really relate to my mom wholly and felt maybe she did understand me.

Sometimes, it's those things we least expect that become core memories, but in the heart of it all, the wisdom stayed, and I'll always cherish that moment in my life dearly for all it was worth.

I sometimes wonder about the time I lived in Culleoka, and there was a brief window where it felt like I maybe belonged, but it ended abruptly. There's something about being in a cemetery in a place that others have long-term ties to, and you don't...it kind of brings an interesting reflection into the experience.

To whom does the land belong?

We belong to the land - not the land to us.

That wasn't so much my focus as the concept of understanding that we belonged to the land, and even as we walked through those rows of headstones, I felt a sense of knowing that brought me peace.

I used to be really afraid of the concept of death, but as I grew older and had a Near Death Experience, I learned it wasn't quite as frightening as I'd imagined it would be.

Perhaps, that is because the calm and serenity that I felt in those moments was similar to what I felt when I nearly died of a hemorrhage leading to 25 needed transfusions, but what is life really?

A series of memories and experiences, and the love we leave behind...