Grief Horse

“As the poets and painters of centuries have tried to tell us, art is not about the expression of talent or the making of pretty things. It is about the preservation and containment of soul. It is about arresting life and making it available for contemplation. Art captures the eternal in the everyday, and it is the eternal that feeds soul—the whole world in a grain of sand. Leonardo”
― Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Losing my mentor, my teacher, my healer, left me very bereft.  Again, I am forced to stand on my own and find my own spiritual way to the things that help me live a good life, to that find ways to heal myself, to that which heals.  As in all things, I do not feel ready enough to do so, even though I have been at this for these 36 years.  At some point, no matter the teaching and the teacher, we must stand on our own ground, stand for what we can learn and from whom, and stand in ways we know to live.  I have lost my one authentic teacher and comforter and healer and compassionate soul that led me these decades.  Grief is a spectrum and includes so very much but this loss strikes right to the spiritual.

I never longed for a mentor the years before in my life.  I merely banged against walls like a child’s toy that hits a barrier and goes another way.  I never had “A Way”.  Once I heard something that struck right to my soul, I became hungry to know more and to feel that kind of knowing.  

I have met some magnificent teachers in my life.  Some were little children who held a ball of sage in his hand until he was put under to sew up his arm and main artery that he cut when his arm went through a window.   Some were young boys, drooping chains, a history of murder, and an angelic face that goes with some FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) youth, as well, no empathy, another sign of FASD in many.  He was a magnificent young man who told his story of killing someone with an axe, in most detailed ways with no emotion.  I watched him turn into someone who no longer bullied the others and became a more caring individual through four years.  What he taught me, along with others int hat group of kids you had broken laws, hurt people, belonged to city gangs, changed their lives in incredible ways as I found those who could mentor them in their traditional ways.  As they were mentored, so was I.  I saw God every day in kids and youth and adults I worked with through my whole career.  

It has been a month that he is no longer on this plane.  It feels like a long long longer time.  I am sure he watches over us, that he loved, and I feel his presence when I smudge.  I am thinking I will need a spiritual way to feel him close, this means, to me.  At first, it was overwhelming.  Now, I have found some peace and comfort.  Was he a perfect man, husband, father, grandfather?  No, but his teachings were perfect for me.  I cannot say for everyone he was a teacher.  But, those who met him or spent time with him during ceremony, or sat and saw him change as he counseled me, they have seen what I saw, felt what I felt, and knew what I knew.  

While he was ill, and I went back to Alberta, I took medicines for him, that I knew he would have me collect, from here and from Arizona.  The last I took over was given to his daughter who knows and experienced the kind of spiritual man he was.  He was young, 61 years old, very traditional, and not one of his children has strayed away from absolute life on The Good Red Road.  He was a blessing to them and they were to him.  They now have the responsibility and the honor and the hard work it takes to live that life without him.  I have faith in his parenting and in them that they can do this.   They have all my love and support.  

I owe my life and my youngest son’s life to his knowing and his medicines, his prayers and patience.  He had been told his time was short.  One is never ready even then, I believe.  That he went suddenly and in the arms of his beloveds as he took his last breath, is comfort to me and, I am sure, to them.  While I will miss him beyond the pale, they miss him more.  He was truly a fast-hold to all things good and spiritual and right things.  Out of my admiration and belief in him, I too, must find ways to carry on in his honor.  

I spent a these few weeks feeling vulnerable and a bit spiritually lost as I grappled with the physical loss his passing meant to me.  But I have taken hold and I know that I have things yet to do, in his honor, and will remember his teachings even more clearly now.  I have a sense he will manifest things for me to learn and to do.  At the end of the month, I go back to Alberta and I will make time to go to their family and gather with them in the love and honor he was and bestowed on all of us who loved him.

This painting was done during his family gathering in their home.  As I listened, I remembered his story of the horse(s) and what colors and what they were doing meant.  It was a good lesson for me.  It came out when I needed that teaching.  It came out as I needed the comfort during the last opening of the casket and the traditional consecration of his body.  What strong young men and women he has raised that even, at that last sight of him, they could do the ceremony needed, sing his song that needed singing, and say their goodbyes.  I was and am blessed by him always.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.25.20