Dariah’s Blooms Day Diary

April 15th 2215

I have finally decided that today is the day I open the journal Grandma Poppy gifted me for my birthday last year. I was too distracted with archery, gardening classes and pottery workshops that I didn’t make much space to go inward and reflect. At times I would surrender to my introspective habits and climb up to the highest of the strongest branches of the eucalyptus and rest my head on her smooth bark, letting my worries dissolve with every breath we shared. The tree would breathe in with me and exhale when I exhaled. Without any verbal communication from the softness of my lips, she was listening to my inner world. She can hear my thoughts you know? She’s a wise old tree full of considerate memory and gentle forgiveness. My thoughts would tenderly seep through the tissue of my brain and the thick of my skull into her tall trunk. We would share our stories in silent conversation. Listening to each other breathe was soothing. My thoughts would grow quieter the more I listened to her leaves dancing with one another in the wind. I went to her the day my grandmother died.

Oh, she was a sweet soul, my Poppy. She used to bake me treats on the wood stove and sit in my company with a pot of tea on the back verandah letting me read my novels aloud to her as she rocked back and forth in her chair. My grandmother’s funeral is being arranged as I write this. She’s the only living person I had left who knew what the world was like before the system shut down.

Since the Great Awakening in 2134, our world has been transformed from darkness and disconnection to restoration and collective abundance. Like the Phoenix rises from the ash, a spark of hope ignited the people of earth and a new wave of innovation enveloped our world. The Founders; regular everyday people; the survivors; stood up with vigour and bravery, and a new society surfaced. We were reborn as a population. We didn’t want to merely survive anymore. We wanted to rebuild our homes and make the world a better place to live in.

Before the Great Awakening, the world was falling to pieces. Now we unapologetically thrive. We nurture our environment and the eco system nurtures us. We are apart of nature not above it. We intertwine our daily lives with the sunshine and the earth. We depend on nature unlike the populations before who relied on a corrupt system which inevitably ended in chaos, and people’s minds combusted with their inner turmoil. Mental illness, disease, and chronic stress was widespread. The world was divided into classes and classifications. There were the rich, middle-class, and the poor. We were slaves to an outdated system that only served those who sat greedily on top.

Humanity had lost their faith and turned against one another causing mass extinction of plant and animal species in the terrains that they abused in wars for their economical gain. Instead of fighting famine and hunger, they fought over resources to fuel their money-making industries. I am lucky that my privilege is blessed upon me by nature and not by how much money my household makes like the ones before me. We don’t do things the same way as they did back then; It wouldn’t sustainable. The survivors burned all of the money. They tore it up in anger and used their angst to brainstorm a new way of interacting.

In the beginning it was tough. They had to rebuild the world as they new it into something entirely different. All the wars had been fought. The technology had died out along with major parts of the ocean, like coral reefs and numerous marine and land species. There was almost nothing left in regards to civilisation. All we had was nature to bring us together. The rain fell every winter. The sun shone down on us from the heavens every summer. We were alive and grateful that the dark times had ended. I learned in School Group about our human history, and so many of us young ones had questions exploding from our tongues. This old world of blazing power and corporate torture was unknown to us. We had only seen the fortunes of the fruit on the trees and the ripe golden sun sift its power down onto us.

We bathe in the riches of the Founders’ hard work and ethical decisions. We swim in gratitude everyday for this being our reality. When we were small and learning about the way of the old world, we didn’t know what money was, nor did we understand why people fought over it and based their lives on such a strange sounding commodity. The Founders of the Great Awakening buried their hands into the soil and began digging for our future. They planted the seeds that allow us to flourish from infants to who we are today. This journey is supported by our circle. We have community; we have strength. My name is Dariah. My mother named me after the qualities of my grandmother who was noble. I was gifted this name to be generous with my heart and share my life’s fortunes with others just as my grandmother did. I must go to the Gathering Centre to join my elders for supper and songs by fire light now. I want to write in my grandmother’s journal everyday during the week of her Exhale Ceremony. It is one of the special ways to cherish the memories of her. With my name hand stitched in “burnt yellow” ochre dyed thread and dried lavenders sewn on the front in the shape of a heart I can imprint anything my heart is yearning to release in the way of words.

April 16th 2215

My lungs breathe in the fresh crisp air of the morning. My grandmother has died. Through the tears, my heart softens and I choose to celebrate her life with the ceremony that will unfold in front of us all today. The steam rises from my herbal remedy tea in my handmade clay mug. Unafraid I face the day. My hands no longer tremble at the thought of losing her, because deep down I know that she has returned to the Mother; the Great Earth. She has returned home. She has returned to our true home.

Living amongst the greenery of pastures and native Australian trees I emerge from my dwellings every morning with a hop in my step for the beautiful day yet to come. Even though it is a bitter sweet day with the memories of my grandmother swirling in my head, I look forward for when I will get to lay her flowers on top of her like the Queen she is. My grandparent’s generation rebuilt the towns and now we live in villages. We have a Gathering Centre where we cook, clean our clothes, weave mats, consume meals, perform plays, dance and sing by the fire, connect over stories, and discuss weekly duties and other important information with the community. Ever since we were little, we have spent majority of our lives outside. My grandmother used to tell me how kids back then used to stay indoors all day playing on electronics causing them to be completely out of touch with nature’s rhythms and their own cycles as they grew older. We do rotational duties of harvesting and nurturing the food. Our organic gardens are the palace of this place. We centre our lives around creation and evolution.

Death is a time of transformation and remembrance. The death of my grandmother also marks a moment of transformation of her soul transcending her body’s walls and her essence soaking down into the earth where we will lay her. It is a time to unite and call her soul out of her body and plant her psychical human vessel into the earth like a seed being planted into the soil for growth. Her body will break down and give nutrients to the soil around her, but her soul will continue the cycle of life, whether that is as a fern, a little germ or any other form that nature takes next. This ceremony is a tradition we do to honour the person’s unique presence on this earth and all of the virtues they have offered in their lifetime. We celebrate their very final letting go when they exhale their soul from the body we recognise them by. Today is the day my grandmother exhales her soul and returns home to where we all truly belong. A new life cycle starts at the end of her Exhale Ceremony, and we begin to settle into the qualities that she reminds us of and strive to meet those virtuous endeavours that she offered to us in her time.

April 17th 2215

She was brave, my grandmother was. She had seen a life before us that traumatised her own mother and sent shivers up everyone’s spine who heard about our great grandmother’s stories. The deaths of many lay pungent and rotting on the streets. My great grandmother was a nurse during the war. She gave birth to grandma Poppy during a time when she wasn’t even sure they would both survive. Sleepless nights and constant reminders of her childhood innocence stripped away by the man who raped her, my great grandmother was round and pregnant with another baby while she was carrying her newly born daughter in her arms. She was alone and afraid. Poppy’s brother didn’t make it. He was a still born baby, and the pain of hearing this haunts me. Everything that happened during my grandmother’s childhood was far from what I saw and felt growing up. Poppy lost her mother to suicide at the age of fourteen, and from then on she had to fend for herself. The world was a dark and terrifying place, but amongst the trauma of living in a half eaten world her heart was calling her to visit the trees. She ran away with a heavy bag of essentials and headed out over the boundaries and into the wilderness. This is where she met my grandfather. They were both children who were wiser than their age, running away to make something for themselves; a new life. A caring and loving friendship was cast upon them, and the warmth of their hearts and survivals skills let them live through the coldest of nights.

Letting go of my grandmother is a journey that is not linear. I wish my grandfather could have seen how beautiful she glowed with the blossoms crowning her head. Laying flowers on her dead body was both euphoric and terrifying. Yesterday we showered my grandmother Poppy in praise, wholesome acknowledgements for her work, and stood together holding hands as my father buried her body in the ground. Before her body was covered in soil and more flowers, I wanted to touch her one more time. I pulled from my pocket the special initiation necklace she once passed onto my mother who passed it onto me when I became a woman. I delicately placed the heart shaped locket on top of her chest as my gift to her for all of the love she has ever given me in this life. Inside there is a bud of dried lavender and a drop of her favourite essential oil. I imagined her smiling for the very last time with her long grey hair surrounded by the most astonishing flowers and her cheeks rosy with the tint my mother had decorated her skin with. She was beautiful and whole. Her body showed the physical beauty that was inside her soul. The Great Earth is lucky to have her, for we were just as humbled by her existence.