Those Who Come After

Through a pot of steaming water, I find myself staring back at me. I take a moment to take a deep breath as I connect with the cornerstones of my own soul.

There are [pieces] of yarrow, rosemary, sage and red rose creating a wreathe around my face and posing as pebbles on the bottom of a pond.

I scoop a ladle through and disturb the picturesque scene.

I began to rinse this warm water over my mother and father. I sing them sweet lullabies as I bathe their bodies for their transition ceremony. It’s been three days since they have crossed over and it is said that the first four days of this process are the most sensitive.

It’s important for the progression of the spirit to have specific songs sang to it so that it can use those songs as a compass to its next soul’s journey. The songs are also soothing to the spirit as it detaches from the body and becomes formless once again.

My parents, they have encountered the trickster spirit of the Stolen Breath. A lot of our people fear the Stolen Breath spirit as it can activate transition within a person. Some relatives say that the reason this spirit is such a trickster is because it carries hidden blessings and teachings that are beneficial and that our human condition sometimes forgets the gift of our multidimensionality.

I continue to dress their heads in crowns of dried sage and wildflowers that my mother and I harvested from this past summer. Often you could find her and I in the meadows dancing among the wildflowers and giving offerings to the plants, the animals and the spirits of the land through our songs and laughter.

If I think of it long enough, I can still feel the summer’s sun warming my face and my mother’s hair glistening gold as she twirls.

I have slipped them into their resting outfits, that I had made from the wool of the sheep that we raised. My mother wears a gown with long sleeves and an off the shoulder neckline, showing off her beauty once more. My father, he was stylish man that valued his comfort. I crafted him a thin sweater that fit just right, still giving form to the life that was left in his body.

As the sun starts to settle, I hear a knock upon the door.

A few of our loved ones come over to bless the home and to decorate it in flowers and song.

These are the beginning moments of moving into the next phase of this process.

We drape my parents in white and start carrying them to the altar grounds.

As we make our way closer, I can begin to see the sacred fire. It stands unlit, waiting for me to take my place as the high priestess of this ceremony.

With every step inching closer, I hold my head high and focus on my inner knowing. I know deep within myself that this is just the beginning of another life for my parents. This is just the beginning of another chapter in our story together and that no force in this universe could keep them from me.

With loving hands, my loved ones and I begin to lay down my parents on their bed of freshly harvested spruce branches. Behind them stands the altar wall. Throughout the altar, you will find my parents ceremonial pieces; feathers, furs, rattles, and relics gathered from their many travels.

The pieces are accompanied by their instruments from many flutes to drums, to stringed instruments. Sprinkled throughout the altar you will find different herbs, tobacco, candles and love letters.

The sight is as elegant as I could have hoped for, surrounded by the beauty that they have created and the love of our relatives.

The lush forest will be what houses the transition this evening.

With the final dim of light from the sun, I bring a torch to the sacred fire. It goes up in flames while in unison, the other priestesses from our village light the candles on the altar.

This is the opening of what will be an all-night ceremony.

It’s said that this will be the last night that their spirits will stay with their bodies before they head into their next soul’s journey. It will take some time before their spirits will be able to visit me again.

The village stays in silence, sitting among the snow-covered ground, in a circle around the altar and sacred fire.

It is not until the moon is high in the sky that it is permitted to begin speaking again.

As I exhale, I watch my breath drift towards the brightness of the moon. Its fullness shimmers off every bound of snow, creating a glistening aura all around us.

These are the same conditions of the night that my parents held their union ceremony. The night that they devoted themselves fully – mind, body, heart and soul to one another and the connection that exist between them.

My parents had grown up together in this very same village. Their parents, my grandparents were neighboring cottages, and they were born just days apart.

They grew up almost as siblings and were often mistaken for twin brother and sister.

From young ages, they were gifted with a certain way of being with the Earth. They often experienced psychic inclinations and spent a lot of time alone growing up or with one another. They spent their time exploring the coastal waters and the mountainous terrain near the village. They developed ways to speak with the animal, plant and fungi kingdoms. They were in tune with the elements, often knowing what kind of weather would be visiting soon.

They were fascinated with creation and were artists, musicians and ceremonialists.

They held a lot of respect and honor from our people. And it has been a privilege to be their daughter.

I took the wing of an eagle and begin to sway it back and forth over my mother and father. Through the energetic field of their bodies, I begin to feel an openness. I could feel their bodies energic ally opening to release the last bits of their spirits clinging to their bones.

I started to create a current from their bodies to the sacred fire; reenacting the flight of the eagle.

Its said that the smoke takes our songs and our prayers to Father Sky, and the channel created by the fire is a bridge from Father Sky to Mother Earth.

In this case, it would be our prayers, our songs, our sorrows, our faith and the spirits of my parents that went up with the smoke tonight.

Throughout the night, each relative took a moment to express themselves. Sharing stories about my parents, sharing laughs and tears. Some sang songs and waled with their instruments, others played gentle melodies and twinkled like the stars. In other moments, we all danced together in a whirling circle around the fire, amplifying all our energy to the heavens.

We shouted wellness to the spirits of my parents, we danced in celebration to the lives that they lived and that they touched; and we sent encouragement for their next journey.

This was a celebration for who they will always be to us.

As the sun started to peak over the mountain ranges, it was time to move the gathering to its final stop. The resting place for my parents.

We paraded through the forest to the bare spot near the base of the twisted tree, where the sun still shines through the dense forest.

Even in their later years, my parents would still come to the twisted tree to play peek-a-boo around it’s trunk just as they did when they were young.

In my minds eye, I can picture them. Innocent and happy, barefoot pitter-pattering along the tree roots and mushrooms at its base. And then later, more experienced, a little wiser and still in love.

The resting space is big enough for the two of them to be placed together.

It faces North to honor the role that they held in eldership of our village.

The bed of spruce is placed down first to create some cushion with my parents to follow.

Our village believes in natural burials, we only place biodegradable materials within the body’s resting spot and our belief is to give back to the soil has much as we can.

When the hole is being dug for the resting spot, it disturbs the ecosystems existing within the earth. One of the systems disturbed through this process is the mycelial network. We take mycelium from the mushrooms that we have cultivated for food and medicine and place that on top of the bodies. This is our attempt of replacing the mycelium that we have ripped up in this process and giving our bodies back to Mother Earth as nourishment.

All our loved ones take a moment to drop cedar, sage and dried roses on top of the mycelium layer for a final prayer.

Each loved one takes a shovel of soil to start filling in the resting spot. And I stand there, realizing that with each shovel I’m moments further since the last time I saw their faces in human form.

Both gone, just like that, thrusting me into a whole new reality without them physically here with me. How am I supposed to walk back to our home, feeling the absence of their presence? How am I supposed to move forward without my mother’s harp humming through the walls and without my father speaking to the fire at night.

That’s it, the last shovel. The hole is full. Right at the end of sunrise. Casting them away to their rebirth, far off into the cosmos.

The sunrises in the east, the direction of the infant stage of life. The direction of the baby’s first breath. And that is our wish for them, to take a new breath into their next soul’s journey. That is why we close the ceremony at sunrise.

Our loved ones slowly leave some in pairs, some one by one, until it is just me standing there.

Once everyone is gone, I collapse from the exhaustion of staying stoic all through the night. I grip the mound of dirt blanketing my parents and my brave face has diminished. I am once again a small child crying for her parents. How in the world am I supposed to do this without you here?!

My tear drops are the first bits of water to touch this new holy space. As they fall, I quiet my breathing and hear the heartbeat of a drum. Tha-dum Tha-dum Tha-dum, it’s coming from beneath me.

Its soothing rhythm has me drift off to a dream state. Far off, I feel myself, shapeless, formless.

I am nothing but a floating purple orb collecting light-years of information that I can barely comprehend yet understand exquisitely.

There it is again, the heartbeat of the drum, Tha-dum, Tha-dum, Tha- dum.

It’s pulling me, like a magnet, a sensation I haven’t quite felt before.

I can lightly hear the chanting of a man and woman becoming clearer and clearer.

As their voices become clear, the space around me comes into focus.

There are ripples emanating from glowing stones, and I can see elders sitting in the spaces in between each earthly person. The elders and I seem to be in the same space as these earthly people yet invisible.

I begin to look down and see myself in human form for the first time. The chanting stops as I look up and there they are.

I can make out the lines of their faces from the emanating stones. It’s my mother and father.

My mother begins to speak, “We call upon those who come after, those who will come after the collapse of corrupt systems, those who come after the tainted streams and the polluted ocean. We call upon those with a different sight of the world, the ones that will clean the airways and run barefoot with the deer once again. We call upon those who will take the time to listen to the rhythms of Mother Earth and restore the planet to its rightful cyclic nature.”

I perk up when I hear my mother say, “Indigo, I have felt you throughout my lifetime. I know part of my great purpose is to be a guide for you as you do great works on this planet. There will be others like you. A gentler type of spirit that this planet has needed for millennia. The Great Shift will happen in your lifetime, and you will be reminded of your great purpose.”

With the clearing of his throat my father says, “Indigo, I welcome you to this plane of existence and vow to be a loyal guardian to you. Throughout all time and space, we will always be connected.”

I reach my arms out across the stones and grab each of their hands. I become shapeless again, morphing into both of their bodies at once. I race through their bloodstreams and merge with their bones.

Throughout the time that I’m forming inside my mother, I shift consciousness between her and my father. I can see from their eyes; I can hear through their ears.

I can feel my father’s fingers as they slide up and down his flute, I can feel his feet and how soft he steps when he hunts.

I can see my mother’s hands as she crafts different medicines for our people and everything that they knew is embedded within me.

I’m being reminded of everything I knew before coming into human form for the first time. That I had agreed to come into this plane with a very specific mission and my parents knew all along what our journey together looked like and so did I.

Tha-dum, Tha-dum, Tha-dum, the heartbeat of the drum is back. This time, I am making my way from my mother’s canal to the new world.

With a flash of light, I hear them say, “We have capabilities on the other side of the veil, that we didn’t have in our earthly form. We will be helping you, watching you, guiding you. There is nothing to be afraid of, we are always together and will always find each other again.”

My eyes burst open, my new life has begun.