(Tuesday, July 21, 2015)
I’m on a walking journey with my two sisters. We reach our ancestral lands (Wabasha) and part ways. I remain with the ancestors.
I am looking into the bedroom of my Irish great grandparents. I see the bed, but no walls. My father and mother, my godfather Marvin Murphy and my aunt Mary Murphy are placing medicine cups of different sizes on the bed. My father seems to be in charge of this ceremony. There is one cup for each chakra of the body. The cups are plastic, like dosage cups from a medical clinic. Each cup holds a different colored elixir. The medicine is for me. I walk on the bed but the cups do not spill.
The scene changes and I am traveling with my grandmother to what I think is an outdoor bible camp, an evangelical gathering. But rather than being seated in folding chairs, people sit at round tables, which gives the event the feeling of a funeral service: church basement, with no walls. People are very somber.
Grandmother Lenora and I circle around to the back of the crowd. We peer in at the group from far away; so far away, my grandmother can no longer see them as living, human forms. For a moment, I share her vision: the people appear as tall, thin torches, with flickering flames for heads. Gold, orange, red. Perhaps this is her funeral at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Minneiska, Minnesota. 1984.
There is a second service in this open field. My funeral.