photographer, peardg

“Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom.” So says the Homeric hymn to Demeter when speaking of Persephone’s removal from the living world. This isn’t a perfect quote because, in the end, T.J. went willingly. The cancer in her lungs had doubled in size in just a few weeks and she had a hole in her back the size of a tennis ball and the cancer in her bones had cost her the use of her legs. Even with all the pain killers over which doctors have command, it’s fierce talons could not be kept at bay. So, with apologies for causing pain to those of us left behind, she let go of the red light of life. She died, her room full of people, her husband with her, her sisters, her brothers, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and friends. The family differs in belief, but for all of us T.J. is now without pain, without gloom. For us, at least for now, the world of the dead is our world: Hades and Erebus is where we are and it is one of mist and gloom. We cry and lament together, we crowd the coffin, sing, seek from our memories the stories of a life now past. So really, the deep cry of Persephone is not T.J.’s but ours.

There are hundreds of us here. TJ was deeply respected and loved. People have been arriving for days, from all over the Pacific Northwest. Some waiting for the pass to open, to drive over the Cascades, some coming down from Canada, others from over the Rockies; the public venue had to be changed to the largest building on the Reservation to accommodate all that have come to share in the lament.

Here Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while I drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh, and dug a pit of a cubit’s length this way and that, and around it poured a libation to all the dead, first with milk and honey, thereafter with sweet wine, and in the third place with water, and I sprinkled thereon white barley meal. And I earnestly entreated the powerless heads of the dead, vowing that when I came to Ithaca I would sacrifice in my halls a barren heifer, the best I had, and pile the altar with goodly gifts, and to Teiresias alone would sacrifice separately a ram, wholly black, the goodliest of my flocks. But when with vows and prayers I had made supplication to the tribes of the dead, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit, and the dark blood ran forth. Then there gathered from out of Erebus the spirits of those that are dead, brides, and unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men, and tender maidens with hearts yet new to sorrow, and many, too, that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears, men slain in fight, wearing their blood-stained armour. These came thronging in crowds about the pit from every side, with a wondrous cry; and pale fear seized me.

There they are, all the shades of Hades; grey and longing for the red blood that is the moving world and the animation of the face that is life. People came into the hall in silence hands sliding around backs, hugs pulling close as each new person moved around the back of the hall looking for a space to sit. People wept in corners, some alone and silent, some supported by others, wailing. Children slept red-faced, faces resting on laps, a small dog wove it’s way back and forth under the regiment of folding chairs. A family of singers, a curved shield around her coffin, sang the songs she loved while she was alive. And by the songs, the tears, the children’s sleep sounds, the dog’s waving tail and clicking nails, prayers were made, and interleaved with the stories told of her impact on their lives, T.J.’s life was taken in to the whole tribe. By stories and song, the blood sacrifice was made to those of us in the grey mist of grief.

Throughout all this, her face was completely still. In life she was never completely still, not like this. Beautiful in the coffin, a bright headscarf, her finest wing dress and shawl, the beautiful glittery nail polish on her hand as it rested on her still belly — she was beautiful in life but this beauty in death is different. It’s as if this woman lying on the pendelton blanket wasn’t really her because when the jokes were told, and the hall bounced with the laughter of everyone crowding the walls because there just isn’t enough room for everyone who wants to be here, wheel chairs wedging in spaces too small to fit them, folding chairs scraping as people climbed over them to get back to their seats, hands on shoulders and legs akimbo in the climb, her face remained still as it never would have in life. Her chin didn’t quiver with giggles, her eyes didn’t crinkle with that smile that meant you were welcome in her house. That animation, that love of happiness and visitors, was what marked her life and was the guide by which she made her decisions.

With the blood offering taken, the shades of Erebus can then speak to the still living. Odysseus speaks to his mother, asking how she died.

Neither did the keen-sighted archer goddess assail me in my halls with her gentle shafts, and slay me, nor did any disease come upon me, such as oftenest through grievous wasting takes the spirit from the limbs; nay, it was longing for thee, and for thy counsels, glorious Odysseus, and for thy tender-heartedness, that robbed me of honey-sweet life.

One of the things said over T.J.s coffin, this by her now widowed husband, we can cry for a little bit, for three days maybe, while we are together and all here to share in the weight of the greyness that wells up when someone dies. But then we have to stop because, as he said, if we don’t return to life we invite death. We ourselves would require the blood offering in order to speak to the life that swells outside us. This Erebus is not for the living, at least not for long. Shared with so many grief can be a force for cohesion, but alone it is the dark grey mist of Hades that isolates even when the shades press forward in throngs. Like Odysseus’s mother, grief too long endured, can kill. So for us, a return to the life of blood, a face reddening from laughter, is the duty of the living. To do anything else is to dishonor the dead.

And yet there remains the tasks that come with the absence of another. Her personal items are burnt and all her remaining goods will be given away. She is no longer a wife and mother. Now in death, she is part of the tribe in a new way. Her blankets, for example, will go with their new families to all the places from whence her mourners have come. At some point those blankets will be used at a powwow, or at a stickgame and they will participate in the acts of living. By virtue of that participation T.J. will remain a member of the tribe, providing comfort because the one who packed for the road, that one knows how that blanket came to the family and, when necessary, will share the story. T.J. will be there at stickgame as one of the treasured tools necessary to a continued existence. She knew all this would happen going into her death, and it would have given her great comfort and happiness to know that she would be spread across all the territory, simultaneously in all those homes, in all those lives. And perhaps more importantly, the greatest comfort goes to those of us still in Hades, still in the grey world of grief. The giving of all her things to all the people, the sharing of song, story, tears and laughter, this is the blood sacrifice, which when taken together for these days, will return us to life.