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Mourning, Five Months Later

11/9/2015

 
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Marcy had many trademarks. Among them: her long, flowing skirts, her annual woodcut valentines, her little white dogs, and her flannel nightgowns. You'd see her in one of her voluminous Mother Hubbard nighties if you spent a holiday overnight with her, if you hosted her when she came to town to help you organize your neighbors against injustice, or if you visited her Facebook page in recent years.

Toward the end of the five years Marcy spent livingly dying, she began giving away bags of her things. There were several grocery sacks of these flannel garments. Did I want one? she asked one day. Of course, I told her. In fact, I'd take a bag or two and share them with the friends she called her Sisterhood. We would wear them at a memorial slumber party somewhere down the line. 

Her response to that notion was the refrain she used often in her final weeks: "Happy. Grumpy."

The sacks of nightgowns sat in my basement, joined by the sheets and colorful cloth we'd used to drape Marcy's body as she lay in her home for visitation after her death. For weeks, I couldn't bring myself to launder them. Eventually I put myself to the task. Each nightgown I pulled from the bag seemed to carry an electric charge. I wept as I moved the load from washer to dryer. I knew I needed to do something more with them.

I had carried Marcy's story with me once before as I walked in Tucson's vast All Souls Procession (I wrote about it here). This year, I decided to walk in one of Marcy's nightgowns. Amber agreed to join me. Picking two and packing them for our flight, my nervous system reminded me how much I still hold from five long years of Marcy's illness, treatment, dying, not-dying, and death. My first night in Tucson brought a vivid dream soaked in ancient images of the deaths our lives depend on.

The day before the Procession we stopped by Armory Park to visit the many personal memorial shrines set up in conjunction with the children's Procession of Little Angels. Scores of families had set out picnic blankets as their children got their faces painted, decorated cardboard strap-on angel wings, and wrote messages to deceased loved ones. Amber and I wrote prayers and placed them in the large urn that would go up in flames during the next night's grand finale. I spent some time chalking a heart on the pavement for Marcy. I submitted some words to be projected in the collective digital shrine.

The next day we drove to Sanctuary Cove, a small ecumenical retreat center founded in 1957 by WWI vet Elmer Staggs to "provide a natural place of peace and unspoiled beauty that allows visitors the chance to 'draw apart' from the intensity of today’s hectic lifestyle and to reconnect to deeper meaning". We walked the trails into the Tucson Mountains, and then I walked the labyrinth. As I came to its center and touched the small cairn of special stones others had assembled, I felt some of the heaviness slip from my shoulders; the cape of grief no longer knotted so snug at my throat.

We drove home to paint our faces and don Marcy's nightgowns. We pinned cards from her memorial service to the front of our frocks and headed off into the night to join an estimated 150,000 mourners in the streets. Mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, dads, brothers, sisters, children; deaths from AIDS, diabetes, cancer; migrant deaths in the desert; LGBT deaths from hate crimes and suicide; deaths of endangered species - these and more were remembered through costumes, floats, banners, signs, hand-carried altars, chants, music, and the final catharsis of the Procession Urn going up in flames.

We returned to our casita for a final burning ritual of our own. We stripped off the nightgowns, scrubbed off our makeup, and then lit the memorial cards we'd carried in our casita's chiminea. In a final bow to Marcy, we ate a couple of pieces of pizza, her favorite comfort food.

Please consider joining me and Amber in donating in Marcy's honor to the Marcy Westerling Legacy Fund. 

Read More:
Looking Death In the Eye (8.30.15)
Marcy Rocks On (6.29.15)
A Secret Chord (6.14.15)
In Memory of Marcy Westerling (6.10.15 obituary)
Our Stories Matter (3.7.15)
I Am With You (2.5.15)
Marcy Speaks Her Truth (10.28.14)
My Friend Marcy Has Cancer. I Don't. Yet. (12.14.13)
Andrea link
11/10/2015 09:47:39 am

I love this, Holly. Love the journey, the observations, the participation in rituals that acknowledge the mystery and fact of death. Most of all I love the thought of you and Amber in those nightgowns. I still have my sister's flannel nightgown (last worn by her in 1979). The electric charge you describe remains. What is it? The absorption of so many dreams, journeys to worlds impossible, unknown, beyond our daily reach? I don't know, but I'm glad the two of you took the magic out for a stroll among more magic. I know you miss Marcy. Thank you for being so creative, so on fire with your grief. I'd love to think she can see the flames from wherever she is. Love to you and Amber.

Holly
11/10/2015 10:37:05 am

Ah Andrea, how good it is, always, to be reflected back in your skillful words. It burns bright at times, yes, and at others times we are in the shallows of low tide you've described so well. Love to you for these longer nights and the company of turbo-charged flannel and all else that remains. xoh

charlotte eulette link
11/10/2015 10:27:35 am

How beautiful Holly. Marcy lives on in all of us thanks to your words and you literally stepping into her life's gown. I often wear clothes or jewelry from loved ones who have died - i feel the connection. I'm in Todos Santos Mexico now and was able to observe with the locals the day of the dead. The joy, the colors, the shrines are touching.

Holly
11/10/2015 10:38:27 am

To you, Charlotte, who teach us all how to remember well, thank you for sharing the joy.

Thalia
11/11/2015 01:02:21 pm

Thanks for sharing this amazing ritual, and the tribute to Marcy that you and Amber embodied in the All Souls Procession. I will never forget the first Dia de Los Muertos I experienced in Mexico-- literally parties at each and every gravesite, of family gathered to eat, drink and talk to their dead. The relationships go on, and it's wonderful to see ways to carry them forward!


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  • Holly Pruett Celebrant LLC – Creative Life Ceremonies from Cradle to Grave
  • Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant ® | Funeral & Wedding Officiant | Interfaith Minister
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