questions and answers
photo by wakingphotolife.
What is Lucy made of, Mama?
She is made of people ash with bone.
She is white, almost. Sometimes grey.
She had no knuckles, she was too young, I think. So there are no knuckles bones. So she is the other bones with people ash. That is what her body is made of, daughter.
But the important part of her is made of whispers and prayers and paint fumes on a spring morning, a candle lit to push away the stink of it, and a moment we took advantage of. The wind blows the chimes in the dining room.
She is made of chimes.
She is made of sprouts and nests and small mites writhing in hay. There is a chipmunk who sits on the roof of the garage. I wave to him every morning. She is made out of him.
She is made of wood blocks and printing ink. She is made of porcelain and papier-mâché. She is made of vine charcoal and 90lb. paper, shredded and waterlogged with seeds embedded in its pulp. She is made of summer and fiddleheads. Yoga and smoothies with berries and almond butter. She is made of long flowing skirts, and a purple dress that made me look like Barney, but feel like a goddess.
She is made of email fights and heartbreak and broken clavicles, too. I try not to talk about that part of her, because I used to believe that the dark parts of her making killed her. Sometimes I think that is what made her live so long. It gave her tenacity. She is made of strength.
She is made of the moon. Further, she is the moon. Hanging effortlessly over our nights, disappearing gradually day by day, and then appearing again, brighter and closer than ever. She is also made of winter solstice. She is made of icicles and darkness and sad songs about sunshine and being taken away
She is made of atoms and stardust and self-sacrifice. She is made of nothing, but everything.
How old is Lucy now, Mama?
She is as old as the trees, my love. Her roots are so far into the earth, they are lava and rock. She is the Anasazi. She is the crone. She is the baby whose bough is breaking. She is as old as the canyons and young as the idea. She is a moss-covered age, one with ferns at her base. She is sixteen and driving erratically. She is eighty and hunched over in secret lives never lived.
She is three and two months old. Younger than you, but also ancient, like the gods, and at the same time, she is always newborn.
What happens when we die, Mama?
Our skin grows cold and turns ashen. Our body becomes stiff. The skin around the fingernails recede making every fingernail longer. The skin hides away and reveals something animal about our humanity. The meaning of life is gone then. The carnal meaning, I mean. The impulse for more is gone. We are just skin and bone. We are carbon, filtering into earth. It nourishes something lovely, we like to think. That also is transitory. The spark leaves our eyes and enters other people's hearts and burns brightly. So brightly it feels like fear. I want to tell you that our body is a shell, as cumbersome and heavy as a turtle. We figured out how to carry it, but it is not comfortable. The part that rots and makes a home for other creatures of the dark, that part is not us. It is something else. It is soil. It is life in its death. We do not have a soul, baby. We are a soul and have a body. I read that once. I believe that.
But what happens to our soul, baby, is not my privilege to know. I just sense that we become part of every person and everything, like a raindrop falling into the ocean. Can we separate the raindrop again? Never, but we still are water.
What do you think happens when we die, baby?
I think we go into trees, Mama. That is why it is very important to hug trees.
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What round about answers are you giving these days? What kind of questions do you get asked, either by children or adults, that stump you? How do you answer them? What kind of questions do you ask? Are your answers concrete or esoteric? Have your answers changed over time?
or alternatively, you can just tell me what your child is made of...
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Reader Comments (18)
I ask the kids "do you know where Joseph is?". X and A say they don't know, but E said the other day, "he was on the slide, Mummy, but he didn't to go on it because he was scared". "Did you see him there E?" "Yes Mummy, he was there, he just a baby and he so scared" That boy seems so spiritualy connected to his baby brother it gives me goosebumps.
What a beautiful peice of writing Angie, as always.
I love this. I have never thought about it in this way. Changing the way we use little words makes such a profound difference.
I am a biologist and so my view is a little biased to the scientific side. Ale's ashes were spread in a beautiful patch of a park. I wanted him to be life again. And he is! He is alive in the birds, flowers, little insects, squirrels, and even trees that grow in that patch. When I go visit him I love hearing the birds and seeing all the life of which he is part now. It makes me cry and smile at the same time. I feel surrounded by him. Life recycles itself and in this way he will be life for a long long time until he becomes stardust again as we all will one day. If he ever has a little brother or sister that is what I will tell them.
Julie, I believe that quote might be CS Lewis, not sure...and thank you Anna and Colleen. I can't tell you how much it means to hear that. I can't always tell if my words are beautiful or too creepy.
Angus certainly isn't asking questions yet. He's just past two. We also don't tell him much about her (or his baby sister) yet. I don't even know where to start. I know when the questions come, I'll turn to you for guidance.
As to what she's made of? Love, excitement, promise, Vietnamese chicken noodle soup - because those are all the things I poured in to her for those nine precious months.
xo
i don't know with any sense of assuredness myself, so i like to read other's beliefs that they have with certainty.
i don't know about heaven, or hell, or spirit trees, or nothingness. i do hope that i will be reunited with my son and daughter when i am gone. my husband is a 'nothingness' believer, so, i keep my reunited fantasies to myself. i have meetings with them right before i fall asleep sometimes- i take my daughter's hand and walk down a beautiful sandy beach with her, turning to see both of our footprints side by side, and i love seeing that. i hold my son up over my head, always warming him in the sun's rays, kiss his neck, look into his eyes. maybe this is the only kind of reunion we will have.
by rabindranath tagore, "...come back, my darling, for mother's heart is full to the brim with love, and if you come to snatch only one little kiss from her no one will grudge it." (from 'the recall'). i like to think about them, hiding around the corner, watching me from the ether, waiting for the moment right before i fall asleep, so we can be together again.
Ernest is too young yet to ask questions.
What is Florence made of? Sunshine, and sky, and clouds, and little knitted stitches on bamboo needles, tiny buttons and light cotton dresses with ribbons, the smell of a snuffed out candle, and paper drawer liners, a brush stroke of duck egg blue, porcelain skin, rosy cheeks and cold cold fingers.
I always believed that there is a higher purpose to everything that happens in our lives. I’ve always preached it to those who were experiencing tough times, to those whom I believed were receiving lessons in their unfavorable circumstances. But now, I am one of “those,” and the part of me that is buried beneath depths of grief is providing all the questions, fighting the idea of a higher purpose. The part that is my Ego self wants to know why this happened to Me? What could I have done differently? What have I learned from this experience? What has this prepared me for? I grapple with these questions, this world of labyrinths and its dead ends, but all I get is more questions. When will my life’s interrogation stop? How long before I accept all that has been and is, and move on? How long before I look back and see all the answers?
Yes, love that.
Oddly enough, Jessica hit me with her first question (I think) just yesterday. I was talking to her about Baby Georgie and how, when she was born, she had a sister. I try to add the odd little conversation about her sister in every now and then, just so it doesn't come as some big revelation later in life. And I told her that the doctors tried very, very hard to make them better but that they couldn't make Georgina well again. I don't think Jessica had any concept of death yet but she does have the idea of hurting yourself. And in her mind there is only one cure for a hurt. She asked me why I didn't kiss Georgina better. And I told her that I couldn't.
For myself, I am so full of questions, so curious. What? Why? How? What does it all mean? Anything at all? Nothing? Everything?
I also think of Georgina as ancient, fallen out of time, away from age and biology and humanity. The crone. Yes. Wise.
She was made of foolishness and anticipation. There are worse things to be made of I suppose.
It was during the morning sickness and daily nap phase of early pregnancy that Michie came back to visit me. Napping on the couch with my older daughter, yet aware of were I was, I heard her snort, and felt her jump up on the couch and snuggle up to my leg. When I woke up I was so happy. A week later she sent me a dream, of herself healed and joyful. I scooped her up and cried "I miss you so much!" and buried my nose in her fur. There are regular dreams, and then there are messages, and you know when you've gotten one.
After AdiaRose died she was so still, so peaceful. I told my husband I thought she looked like a tiny bodhisattva- composed, self contained, so beyond us. Already so far beyond us. She left with out opening her eyes, without a cry. Her Daddy said she only gasped. I felt that I couldn't reach her in any way, that she had left me far,far behind. It really hurt, it was so painful, the absence of one so loved and wanted, who I never got to know. The grief over this emptiness was somehow so much worse than the grief that is full of memories.
I realize now the connection, that the gift Michie gave me was to let me know that they are still there, and that the love survives the death of our bodies, the pain of our bodies, the failure of our bodies. My daughter is still there, and she can feel our love.
Michie's death also prepared our older daughter, in a very concrete way, for the death of her sister. She understood, because of Michie, although only just three. Her Daddy left the hospital the next day to tell her. He said the wail that tore from her sounded so adult it broke his heart all over. She told him she wanted to check my tummy and make sure her sister wasn't still there. After the funereal she asked him if people can come back, and if he thought
Pumpkin (AdiaRose's nickname) and Michie were hiding somewhere in our house.
She talks to her sister all of the time. What is she made of? Little birds, snowflakes, twinkling stars, the scar on my belly, her Daddy' hands, her sister's eyes, the smell of Michie's fur, the mysterious universe where the communion of souls is happening, somewhere we can't see from here. We can feel it, though, because it's where we came from, and where we are going back to.
Thank you, Angie, for your beautiful post.