Grit

    "Should I send in some powdered eggs?" I asked in preparation for my first year on the island.

    "Why, what are those?" the person on the other end of the phone replied.

    "Well, they are dried eggs that you rehydrate... never mind, can I get eggs there?"

    "Yes, they sell them right in the store."

    I had been out to Saint Lawrence Island the year before as a part of a church mission trip, but we had traveled there with all of our own supplies in boxes we carried onto the plane.  There had also been a potluck held as part of a church conference we were there for.  I still think back in awe to the size of the bowl containing green jello that seemed to evaporate as people moved through the line.  So, I was not thinking about what I would eat for an entire year for the three days we had visited like I was now in preparation for my first year as a middle school teacher there.

    I had grown up reading Hatchet, My side of the Mountain, and watching movies like Swiss Family Robison, and Mountain Family Robinson.  Living in a tree with a pet raccoon seemed like an ideal existence to me even at the age of twenty-two.  When I had walked into the job fair in Anchorage, I knew that I could not walk out without a job.  I didn't have the pet raccoon yet, but I was willing to live in a tree.

    "What would it take to make you happy in  Alaska?" Jim Hickerson, the Bering Strait School District representative had asked.

    "Well, I grew up in northern Michigan, and so I'd like good fishing, hunting, and trees," was my very simple response.

    I had laughed when he offered me Savoonga, "I've been there and know they don't have trees."

    He began describing the other offering as clinging to the side of a rock in the middle of the Bering Sea, and all of a sudden Savoonga looked really appealing.

    While at new teacher in-service, I bought one box of silver salmon and one box of king crab from the local fishery in Unalakleet.  I ordered what seemed like a fortune at the time in groceries from Sam's Club's bush department.  They informed me that my food would arrive in Savoonga in a week.

    When a week came and went, I waited another before calling them.

    "We have no record of your order," the frank individual informed me, "but we would be happy to help you place one."

    Having two boxes of crab and salmon, I was not starving, but fish on the menu every night was starting to get old.

    "You need to call Steve and Sherry Frank," my two new teaching friends, Cory and Susie insisted.

    "You need one spark plug, and you can call them up and they'll get it for you," Cory had explained.

    "Or, if you need a fifty-pound bag of rice, they'll get that for you," Susie added.

    I needed the rice.

    Two decades later, and Steve and Sherry of ASAP Shopping Service still hold a position of sainthood in my heart.  They found everything on my list and shipped it, and when they were all done, I still had both my arms and legs... and my belly wasn't growling anymore.

    When the boxes arrived via the local airlines, I felt like the wealthiest man in Alaska.  I unpacked each box slowly on the kitchen table, almost drooling over the contents as I dreamed of what I would cook first on my avocado colored cook stove two feet away.  I packed the perishables in the freezer/fridge.  In 2001, I never gave a second thought to the longevity of 1970s appliances, but I wonder now if a new teacher was greeted to that same duplex by the welcoming glow of a pilot light from that same cook stove this year.

    I made breakfast the next day and looked out of my living room window, around the clod of mud lodged between the two panes of glass, with idealism.

    Food was not the only hurdle that greeted me upon arrival.  I walked into the room that would be my first classroom and was met by a bare plywood floor, tables with boxes piled three high on them, and shelves full of library books and the reading primers for the entire school.  The old school library was being converted to become the new seventh grade classroom, and I was assured that in a week that the boxes would be gone, the floor carpeted, and my room ready for the twenty-two young teen bodies that would be occupying it.  I optimistically took the new assistant principal's word and loaded on the plane for the all staff in-service that would be taking place in Unalakleet.  Oh, and my living room window would be replaced by maintenance before I got back.

    All staff in-service in the Bering Straits School District is a unique experience.  There is no hotel in Unalakleet and no possible way that the few bed and breakfasts could host the teaching and administrative staffs of fourteen visiting schools.  So, it is basically a huge adult slumber party with single males occupying one batch of classrooms, single females in another, and married teaching couples spread around to smaller offices and support rooms.

    There were no cell phones at that time, internet was limited, and so we did what people did in our off hours: cards, board games, read, talked, and the younger folks (this included me at the time) would play pick-up basketball in the evenings.  The working hours were occupied with meetings on Success for All (the reading program I was told I would not be teaching), curriculum, and a few just for fun classes mixed in (I learned how to make a fire with a bow drill at one one of my early BSSD all staff in-services).  At night, I'd crawl into my sleeping bag over a Thermarest sleeping pad on a hard classroom floor.  In the morning, I'd wake early in an attempt to get a shower in the small locker room before the other couple hundred educators woke to start their day.  All the meals were served in the school lunchroom.  Being fresh out of college, I was still very used to cafeteria food, and not having much food at my apartment back in Savoonga, was not very picky about what I ate.

    I sat down with a retirement counselor and set up my retirement investments because it seemed like the right thing to do, not because I ever thought I would reach retirement age.  That was an eternity away, and I was only planning on being in Alaska for three years.  In fact, I had promised my mother that I would return to Michigan to teach and farm after that time.  She cried anyway watching me pull out of the driveway.

    When inservice was over, optimistic teachers from around the entire district waited their turns to board airplanes heading back to their sites.  It was a Friday, and school started on Monday.  We were excited and ready for another, I was ready for my first, year.

    It didn't really bother me that the mud clod was still in my window when I arrived home.  I was sure maintenance would get to it.  And, when the visiting Success for All (SFA) facilitator told me on Sunday afternoon that I would end up teaching an SFA class after all, I took it in stride as though it was something normal to find out I was teaching a class I had never taught before the day before I would be teaching it.  I spent Sunday night preparing my SFA lessons and setting up my classroom (which did have carpet albeit the books and shelves were all still in there) for SFA.

    Clean shirt and tie, I stood before my first classroom of students for homeroom on Monday.

    "John?" I read from my classroom roster.

    "He is at fish camp," a student replied, "and probably won't be back until after whaling season."

    "Oh, how long is that?" I asked naively.

    "Next month or the month after," the same student offered.

    I tried to hide my shock and went on to the next name, an evidently feminine one.

    "Here," came a voice from the middle of the class.

    My students knew I was a first-year teacher, and evidently were trying to pull a fast one on me.

    "This is a girl's name," I pointed out.

    "I'm a girl," came the same voice again and I reassessed her short bowl-style haircut.

    "Oh, yeah, of course you are," and I continued on down the roll discovering that most, if not all, of my students went by their native names rather than the English ones listed on the paper the office had supplied me with.

    I somehow survived day one, came back for day two, and went on to have a great first semester filled with more than my fair share of learning experiences, bumps in the road, and hurdles.  Somehow during that time, I learned all 22 of my students' English names as well as all 22 of their native names.  I picked up a small Siberian Yupik vocabulary to the point that I could understand when a student was calling me stupid (which I was on some occasions).  I also made the choice somewhere in there to love my students like they were my own kids.

    "Are you coming back after Christmas?" a student pointedly asked.

    "Of course," I answered.

    The thought of not returning after Christmas had never crossed my mind, but evidently it had crossed my students' minds as it was something they had experienced with teachers in the past.

    "You came back," was the chorus that greeted me from a class of smiling faces after the holiday break.

    It was not all easy sailing after that.  Students didn't just magically start doing what I asked of them.  Attendance for some was a real challenge, homework was almost impossible to get back, classroom management was held together by a thin thread at times, and I continued to try to fit into a culture very different from the one that I had grown up in, but the simple act of returning after break made a big difference in the trust my students had in me.

    "Hey, cut it out," a young man in my classroom corrected one of his classmates, "you need to hear this, Jason cares about us."

    His classmate quit his screwing around and got back to work.  I hope my student advocate understands how much I needed and appreciated his help.

    After the students left on the last day of my first year of teaching, I held my hands above my head and made a guttural noise of elation.  I had made it.  My first year was behind me and living through and enjoying two more in Alaska seemed much more attainable than it did on day one.

    A couple of days later, I packed up my bag and took one more look past the mud clod in my living room window and headed out to the airport.

My first kitchen in Savoonga

  

Corporal Wheeler

    "That's not him," Amouk insisted as she looked down at the obituary pulled up on the small phone screen.  "He had blonde hair and blue eyes."

    She continued to read down through the announcement.  It was already five years old, he had passed in March of 2017, and she closed her eyes to see backward better.

    "He never talked about his family," she said as her eyes opened and she looked down into the picture of an old man and saw the boy she had known.  "I'd be a widow now then... well, I'm a widow already."

    Amouk's mind traveled back in time 75 years.

    "Ellen, marry me," the young Corporal proposed.  He was from Chicago and would return there, hopeful that she would accompany him.

    "I'll have to ask my mama," she had answered, and so she did when she went home from her walk with the handsome corporal.

    After some thought, her mother had answered, "I want to be able to speak with my son-in-law and his family,"  The answer had been spoken in Inupiaq.

    Ellen had just looked away.

    "And it is so far.  You would be so far away from me," her mother had continued.

    Returning to the present for a moment, Amouk explained, "She had just lost my sisters as they were about the age of being married.  My one sister was engaged when she died from the flu.  1945.  Daddy had gone back to herding reindeer that season.  They buried the girls. I couldn't leave her too."

    "I'm flying out, and I want you to come with me," the Corporal explained.

    "I can't," was Ellen's only answer.

    "Ride with me in the taxi to the airport?" he had asked.

    She did, and the ride had been a tearful one, the young man unable to convince her to continue on with him.

    Amouk looked back down at the obituary and saw the names of his children, "We could have four children, he had told me.  It couldn't be.  I went home and decided I couldn't even keep his picture.  Someday my future husband might come home and see it.  I got rid of his photo."

    Amouk braced herself with one hand on the countertop and swung at my arm with the full force of her 92-year-old frame.  I stood still to allow the impact.

    "I told you not to go searching for him," and she shook her head as she made her way to the living room.

    She sat on the couch, "We were such good friends.  We could just walk and talk and talk.  It must have been 1947, but my mom had just lost my sisters."

    "I met Howard, my husband, later and had to learn to speak Siberian Yupik to talk with his family.  My mom couldn't speak with his family either," Amouk laughed at the irony.

    "You made me promise not to move your daughter too far from you," I reminded her of our conversation when I had asked for her daughter's hand.

    Amouk returned my smile.  I now had a better understanding of the importance of that promise.

Young Ellen in Nome (early 1950s)

Suffer the little children...

But Jesus said, "Let the children come to me.  Don't stop them!  For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."  Matthew 19:14 (NLV)

    "You're not in trouble," I started my usual spiel.  "There are a couple of people that would like to ask you some questions in the office."

    The unsure girl who stood up to my waist followed closely behind me as I attempted to maneuver so that we were walking side by side.

    "Okay," she said, her hands fidgeting, looking for something to do.

    We turned the corner, and she stepped through the office door before me.  The adults in the office attempted reassuring smiles, smiles of strangers who meant well, but had difficult questions to ask.

    It is not required that a school official be present at meetings like this, but I always offer, "Would you like me to stay with you through this?"

    "Stay," the little girl said barely above a whisper.

    Introductions, easy questions, and then the tough ones always start.

    "Can you describe the last time you were afraid?  When was the last time you saw the police?  Does anyone in your family drink?  When was the last time?  Do they get physical when they drink?"

    My older girl was this girl's age at one time, my younger girl goes to class only just down the hall from her.

    "What is your favorite food?"

    "Moose soup," the girl smiled back.

    "Moose soup, I enjoy that quite a bit myself.  Do you get enough to eat?"

    "When there is food in the house," she said looking down and the words trailing off.

    "Does your dad have a wife or other significant other?" the questions continued.

    The little girl answered about topics that I didn't even know about until my twenties, her voice always quiet, a tear once in a while would work its way down her cheek.

    "I'm sorry," the case worker said at one point, "I don't mean to make you sad.  Do you have someone to talk to when you feel sad?"

    The little girl looked up into the face of the case worker, but she didn't have an answer.

    "What is something you enjoy doing with your dad?" he worked at changing the mood to something positive for the girl to hold onto.

    When she didn't answer, he prodded a little to give her help in the question, "When was the last  time you had fun with your dad or what is something that you really like about him?"

    "I don't know," she looked at her hands in her lap.

    What if this was one of my girls?  How would they answer?  What is something you like about your dad?  When was the last time you had fun with him or something you really like about him?

    My thoughts went to walking in knee deep snow, breaking trail for a ten-year-old who was not terribly keen on walking so that we could check her little trapline.  I went back in my mind to a four-year-old on skates pushing a chair around a rink, family dinners, books at bedtime, pulling the covers up around the chin of a sleeping teen with her dog pressed tight beside her.  

    We are given these gifts for such a short time.

    "Okay, that is really all the questions I have," the case worker began wrapping things up, "you can go back to class."

    "I can walk you back," a voice I recognized as mine brought me back to the present, "if you feel you are ready."

    "I'm ready," the little girl said as she stood from her chair.

    We walked in silence to the gym where her class was happily running around in a game of caribou, caribou.  She jumped right in as though the last ten minutes had never happened and crossed the gym evading her classmates acting as wolves.  They were not the first she'd seen.

We are given these gifts for such a short time.

November Is Apple Pie Month

    

         November is apple pie month.  In a year of fierce disagreements, this is a simple fact that is not up for debate.  Plenty of people have told me that they don’t like apple pie, but it is just because they have never had the right one.

They picture a Marie Callender’s apple pie coming from the freezer section, going into the oven, and coming out… ordinary.  Nothing against Mrs. Callender, I am sure she is a fine woman, but her apple pie comes up short and is only one of the examples that have caused Americans to move away from what was once the very epitome of what was great about this country.

“Oh no,” I have been corrected during debate, “my mom made homemade apple pie, and it still is not my favorite.”

Upon further investigation, “homemade” was a store-bought crust and a can of pie filling from the shelf at IGA.

“My mom,” I begin, “can make a pie.”

It is hard to even write about it without my salivary glands waking up and paying attention.  

Pies in my parents’ house growing up started with my dad and I picking a truck load of apples.  As fall drew near around late August or early September, he and I would climb in his full-size Chevy Blazer, connect the utility trailer my grandfather had built what seemed like to a young kid a hundred years ago, and pointed the nose of the truck toward Posen.

My dad was a UPS driver with his route taking him to the small agricultural town just outside of Alpena.  He easily made friends with his customers, one of whom offered the apples from the trees lining his cow pastures.  The cows would push through the fence to get the apples that fell in the ditch, and the farmer was happy to have them gone.

My dad and I would work our way down the fence line, tasting apples from the trees as we went, determining which ones would go in pies, which would become sauce, which would get eaten fresh, and which ones the deer would get in the feed piles near our hunting blinds.

They were all wild apples from trees that had sprung up of their own accord and were left to fend for themselves.  And, they produced some of the best tasting apples that so many of my childhood memories are made of.

“This one’s a good one,” Dad would squint one eye as he bit into an apple tart enough to make his whole face pucker up.

He would hand me a sample, I’d agree, and those apples would get set aside for pies.

At home, in the evening after work, my dad would go out to where the apples were piled by our shed, grab five gallons worth of pie apples in an old bucket, bring them into the house, head down to the basement, turn on the news, and begin to peel.

My mom would always act surprised when he would return up the stairs after the news with a bucket of peeled and cored apples.

“Oh, my,” she would exclaim in the same way about every time, “what am I supposed to do with all these?”

He would look at me out of the corner of his eye and say something like, “Well Mom, we haven’t had a pie in a while now.”

Time is a relative thing, but “a while” in reference to pie in my childhood home in the fall referred to approximately two days.

“Well,” she would sigh, “I guess I’m due to make a pie.”

Evidently “a pie” is a collective term for six pies, because when she was done, there would generally be a half-dozen put together, crusts from scratch, filling from real ingredients, some for the freezer and a couple for eating right away.

My Dad would drop a pie off at Chuck Allison’s place about once a week.  He was a good family friend and was like an uncle to me.  He was also a special challenge for my mom.

“All right Chuck,” she would say as he handed her the empty pie plate at church, “how was this one?”

“Well Nan,” he would him and haw a little, “not going to lie to you.  It was a pretty good pie.”

Mom would smile knowing Chuck had not completed his review yet.

“But,” he would continue, “it could’ve used a little more cinnamon, and if you send another my way, I’ll gladly try it for you again and let you know if you get it right.”

Mom would laugh, shake her head, and walk away with the empty pan.  Chuck would look at me, push out his dentures and wink.  He knew he’d be getting another pie next week.

Traditions changed a little when I left for my first year of college.  I missed gathering apples, but more tragically, I wasn’t there when the hot pie came from the oven.  

At the dining hall, I bit into a piece of apple pie, tasted it and let my fork fall to my plate.

“What’s wrong?” my roommate asked.

“Well, it isn’t exactly home cooking,” I complained.

“The food here is just as good as what my mom makes,” he replied.

I silently mourned for this poor guy’s childhood.

Mom found a way though.

“You think it will ship?” she asked my dad as she held up a freshly baked pie.

He took it from her, shrugged his shoulders, found a box and started a forty-five-minute process of armor plating that pie to improve its survival chances.  When he was all done, he stood in front of my mom with the box at chest height, turned it upside down, and dropped it to the floor.  He picked it up, opened the box and pulled the perfectly unscathed apple pie from inside.

“It’ll make it.”

My roommates and I were on a first name basis with the UPS guy.  He’d come in with a box we knew held pie, sit down, and drink a bottle of coke that we offered him.  When he would head back out, the guys in the dorm room would celebrate pie day.

“What’s pie day?” Bob, a new initiate to the celebration naively asked.

“Well, you see,” my roommate started, “Jason’s mom bakes a pie and ships it to us about once a week.  When it gets here, we eat it.”

Bob looked on not completely understanding the sheer look of excitement in my roommate’s eyes as he did a Wile E. Coyote dance across the room looking for the knife.  It was, after all, just a pie.

“Well, I guess I’ll try a slice,” he shrugged.

We opened up the pie, I looked down holding the knife, and asked the logical question, “How do you cut a pie into thirds?”

“What?” Bob asked incredulously, but he had found a new understanding as we all laid around the room enjoying the euphoria that came from eating a third of my mom’s apple pie.

From then on, Bob just kind of knew when the UPS truck would show up.

Tradition changed once again upon my accepting a job in Alaska.  I hugged my mom and assured her it was only for three years and that I would move back to Michigan to teach after scratching the adventure itch.  Inadvertently, I moved out of pie range.  Though my dad was sure he could armor plate a pie to survive even the beating USPS and the village airlines would put it through, my mom was not convinced it would not spoil in transit.

They began armor plating apples and sending up two boxes of a bushel a piece.  Kids in Savoonga began finding out that there were more than the two varieties they knew: red and green.

“I don’t like red apples,” a student exclaimed as I handed him one to try.

“That’s because you have only had Red Delicious your whole life,” I said as he took the Mac I was offering. 

“Wow, this is good,” he said as his eyes opened literally and figuratively.

And, I began making my own pies.

“Jody,” I called my sister, “do you have Mom’s pie recipe?”

“Uh,” she responded, “I don’t need it.  I just drive over to her house.”

Mom sent me a box with all of the necessary recipes for adult life shortly thereafter.  I think she has tried to give them unsuccessfully to my sister too.

As I made my first pie, I read the note next to the teaspoon of cinnamon, “I use more.”  I couldn’t help but think of Chuck as I turned the cinnamon container over and began beating the bottom.

Shortly after making that first pie, I met the woman who would become my wife, and it kind of put a little kink in my three year plan.  Mom and Dad celebrated with us at the wedding, and then continued sending two bushels of apples each fall.  We adopted a daughter who quickly earned the nickname “Two-a-Day Romay,” because, unchecked, she could eat a half-dozen apples on her own in a couple hours.

Myra and I took apple pies to family gatherings.

“You guys are in charge of the pies from now on,” my nephew mumbled through a mouthful of his second piece.

In a year when we can’t travel to see family back east and the tie to home is blatantly more important, my younger daughter squealed as I carried a box up the porch stairs, “Oh, that one smells wonderful… its apples.  Open it Dad, open it,” she encouraged as I put it down.

Besides needing the same limit we put on her sister, Ellen has also taken up her mom’s habit of sneaking an apple out of a freshly baked pie.  I pretend to be upset, but all that does is encourage the both of them to continue their bad behavior.

This year marks my twentieth in Alaska, and people continue to ask if I miss Michigan and if I ever think about moving back.  I have gotten slower to answer.  My mind drifts to the sun rising over Lake Huron, the red and orange painted across the hills of hardwood in autumn, the feeling of the first dip of the year in the lake, the smell of fallen leaves during bird season, the sound of a summer breeze kicking through the aspen, and the taste is always apples.

But, this is where God has me now, and I am happy in that.

Halloween 2020: Coming out of Retirement

     

Romay grew a mustache one Halloween.

      “Dad,” Romay used the voice she always employed when she wanted something.  It was almost sweet enough to give cavities.  “Can I drive the truck to go trick or treating with my friends?”

It was the voice that almost always worked, but I had pictures of a sixteen-year-old girl hopped up on candy driving a full-sized pickup while other kids ran around the roads hopped up on candy.

“I’m happy to drive you,” I answered.

She smiled, grabbed my arm, and began pulling me toward the door, “Okay, Dad, let’s go.”

I spent the rest of the night driving three teen girls from house to house as they ran an assault on the village of Galena.  By the time they were around 16, Romay and her friends had Halloween down to a science.  They knew which houses gave out full candy bars, popcorn balls (still the coveted item in Alaskan villages), cans of pop, etc. and would map out in advance and give me my driving orders as we went.

To be honest, I knew which houses I wanted to stop by as well as the dads would send out treats for me who they knew was sitting in the truck while the kids stood at their doors.

The action was fast and furious.  

“Go, go, go,” the girls would start yelling before the truck had even fully stopped while the girl sitting close to the door struggled with the mechanism.  

The goal was to get as much candy and goodies as possible before the houses ran out.  After finishing up, we would return to our house where the girls would spread their take on the kitchen table and divide up their plunder.  I felt like I was watching buccaneers in a pirate cave.  Kemper, our yellow lab, looked on with great interest as the girls opened their popcorn balls to enjoy first.

“Shanda makes the best popcorn balls,” Romay said as she unwrapped hers.  The absolute joy on her face changed to sheer terror as she lost grip on it and it began falling to the floor.  

The ball never hit the ground.  Kemper had seen his opportunity as though it was the moment he had been training for, snatched it from the air, crunched twice and swallowed.  He looked pretty proud of himself as Romay sank to her chair groaning.

Romay and her friends trick-or-treated all the way up through their senior years.  It was something that I secretly looked forward to at least as much as they did.  Senior year Halloween came, and I knew Romay would be heading off to college the next fall.  I wanted that Halloween to last and tried my best to hold on to that evening for as long as I could.  I was not ready for trick-or-treat retirement as I felt I was still in my prime, but all good things come to an end at some point.

We moved on from Halloween to the rest of the roller coaster that is a kid’s senior year.  As parents, Myra and I did our best to hold on for the ride.  Romay’s basketball season started and we moved on to going from game to game and cheering her on.  Just as the season started, Myra came down with a flu that seemed to drag on forever.  She couldn’t shake it.

A couple of weeks of the flu, and we got smart to what was really going on.

“What are you guys planning on doing with your empty nest,” Andy asked as I sat down next to him at the Grace Christian School basketball tournament.  

“Well,” I smiled, “we won’t have an empty nest.  We’re backfilling.”

We had only just started telling family that Myra was pregnant,  Andy is my cousin, and so fit that circle.

“Oh, well,” Andy smiled back, “congratulations.”  

He found out only fifteen minutes before our older daughter who laughed and cried and excitedly looked forward to being an older sister, even if there was to be eighteen years between them.

Our backfill baby was born that July and entered the world in much the same way that her older sister exited the truck while trick-or-treating.  But, when Halloween came that year, Ellen didn’t even dress up.  The next Halloween came, and though she dressed up like a dog, she didn’t pull me toward the door to go raid our neighbors for candy.  She fell asleep before our candy bowl at home was even empty.  

Halloween number three and four came, and she finally started getting the idea.  It helped that she could walk, and she found it novel that the three houses we went to gave her candy just for knocking on their doors.

Halloween number five, and her mom asked, “Do you want me to take you trick or treating, or Dad.”

“Dad,” she said as she grabbed my arm and started dragging me to the door.

My heart beat a little faster.

She looked at me in the car and started talking strategy, “I want to go to Harper’s, Miss Vicky’s, Ms. Martins, Cassidy’s…”

I have called my older daughter on occasion and apologized for her role as my experiment child I had learned with now that her younger sister is the one benefiting.  She always says something to put my mind at ease, but with this child, this time around, I don’t take anything for granted.  

Ellen opened the car door and ran for the next porch and for a brief moment, I saw her older sister doing the same thing.  

In the car by myself, I whispered a short, quiet prayer, “thank you, Father,” and watched as Ellen scampered back down the steps, to the car, and climbed inside.

“Let’s go to Papa Jeff’s now,” she requested and we drove off for our next stop, her smile matching mine.

I wasn’t ready to be done with Halloween.

Two good dogs (Halloween 2017)

A Brand New Mourning: A bush funeral.

           

A Funeral in the Bush

           I grew up in rural northern Michigan.  Life was far from sterile.  I was pulling venison off of my dad’s meat saw in our garage by the time I could just see over the table.  I did my fair share of manure shoveling and spreading on the backyard garden and killed my first deer on my own when I was twelve.  I knew the feel of fish slime on my hands, dirt under my finger nails, and slivers in my palms.

            Losing family members and friends, on the other hand, was a very sterile experience.  I was a teen before going to my first funeral, and it was orchestrated from the beginning to remove me, as well as the rest of the audience, from the true act of the person passing from this world to the next.

            Don’t get me wrong, the tears and pain we felt at that funeral were real.  I knew that my great-grandmother was gone from her body, and what was in the casket was just her shell.  But, when the pastor was done, the last hymn was sung, and the casket closed, that was it.  I walked out to the car, and my grandmother was gone.

            I will never tell someone how to mourn.  That is a very personal experience and is a path that we all have to walk on our own, but there is something different about how we do it in the culture that has adopted me.  I don’t want to claim it is better, but it does work better for me.

            My family recently lost one of our close members.  He went hunting on his own, and while out, experienced a stroke.  Search and rescue was made up of family and friends.  We searched all over town, checking the homes of his friends, we looked across the river at his old cabin, and then finally took the search out of town where he liked to hunt spring bears.

            A friend spotted his four-wheeler from the air and called others to go out by four-wheeler to find him.  When they got there, he was conscious, but had signs of a stroke.  They loaded him on to a four-wheeler and met up with others who had gone out with a side-by-side that made transporting him easier.

            The clinic staff met us in the very early hours of the day.  The physician assistant was the spouse of one of our local teachers, his helpers my former students.  When our loved one made it to the clinic, there were no introductions necessary as we strategized how to best assist.

            Due to Covid, a medivac without an accompanying family member was arranged.  My sister-in-law flew in later to be with her brother.

            He didn’t get better, and the reports from the hospital indicated that it was only a matter of time and that we should say our final goodbyes and make arrangements. 

            Making arrangements in the village means that family contacts the pastor, speak with a  friend with coffin making experience, talk to the city about where to dig a grave, and decide who should make the grave marker.

Gary allowed me to learn from him.  Knowing how to build a casket is an important skill in the village.

            “You live in the olden days,” my sister texted me when she found out what was going on. 

            In Michigan, people don’t make caskets for loved ones.

            The school district donated pine, and a family friend (we’re all related in the village somehow) offered to lead building the casket as well as teach me what he knew.

            Dave, who donated materials and shop space, commented as the casket took shape, “Gary, if I go first, this is the style I want.  Looks like something right out of a western movie.”

            “Well, Dave,” Gary responded, “if I go first this is what I want you to make for me.”

            Dave and Gary are brother-in-laws.

            We worked on the casket for three nights.  Myra and Ellen came along for the last two with Ellen helping around the shop, sweeping up sawdust, helping to clear coat the pine, and picking up scrap wood. 

            “What are we building, Dad?” she asked at one point.

            Ellen is three.  This is a casket, would not have been a sufficient answer.

            “Well…” I started, “Uncle didn’t get better when he was sick.  This is a box to put his body in since his soul doesn’t need it anymore.”

            “Uncle isn’t real anymore?” she asked.

            Admittedly, her question took me aback.  She is three, but made me think about death in a whole new way.  We had been fishing plenty of times together recently and the way she verbalized the difference between the fish when they first came splashing from the water and what they were like after being in the plastic tub was the same.  Living fish were “real.”  Dead fish were “not real.”

            And, I had to say, that a person’s body after that person had passed looked nothing like the “real” person he or she had once been.  That body wasn’t a real person anymore.  What had made it real was missing.

            Where I grew up, the hospital and funeral home made all the arrangements for transportation.  In the bush, we worked with a friend on shipping, met the plane with a truck, and transported the body to the clinic where it would be until the funeral.

            Three guys and Ellen went to get the casket (we dropped Bub off at home before going to the clinic), and we carefully transported the beautifully crafted pine box.  We moved the body to the casket, and one of his sisters put socks on the body that she had knitted for him.  The funeral home had taken care of the rest of the dressing, though that is not always the case with bush funerals.

The casket matched the man: He was an outdoorsman who lived a rugged life.  The handles (not seen in this picture) were made from an ax handle that he must have used for years at his camp.

            Earlier in the summer, a friend, Bub (she goes everywhere I go), and I went logging up the river for trees calving off the river bank.  I had milled a number of them up into boards.  An electric planer cleaned two of them up, and I fashioned the marker for the grave.

            The grave it would mark was that of an outdoorsman and artist.  Its natural simplicity and straight lines were purposeful for who I was building it for.  The school shop teacher laser engraved it, and we decided to leave it natural spruce with just a clear coat.

            “He would have passed that tree on the river a lot during his life,” Myra pointed out.  “Now it is his cross.”

            The pall bearers assembled at the clinic and loaded the casket into the back of a truck and took it to the church where the same discussion we have before every funeral took place.

            “Do we need to take the center post out of the entry door?” I asked.

            “Nah,” another pall bearer responded, “the casket should fit.”

            After a failed try…

            “How does this center post come out again?”

            People were sent for tools that were brought to the church just as my nephew, Merle, was getting the center post out.  We will remember how it works for next time… and still have the same conversation.

            Covid has impacted everything, funerals only being one.  The viewing was limited to just a few family members and friends before we moved out to the cemetery.

            A long-time family friend and pastor, Chip Swanson, lead the service on the most beautiful day we had experienced in weeks.  Chip had spent a lot of time with the family, at times even sharing a room with the man we were now burying. 

            “Nowhere in the Bible,” Chip spoke, “does Jesus say, ‘are you ready?’  He just says get ready.  Now.”

            We laid the casket we had built with our hands to rest in the grave.  In Michigan, there is a fancy lift that lowers the casket.  In the bush, the pall bearers lower the box by rope by hand.

            “Those who believe in the resurrection of the body,” Chip said, “are welcome to put some soil on the casket.”

            The men then provided their final service to the one who had passed and began filling in the grave.  The city left around a dozen shovels for the job, and as one man tired, another tapped him on the shoulder for his shovel.

            The first shovels-full were somber and the workers sad, but there is something about the work and working together.  Stories were told of the person’s life, and smiles began.  It was rhythmic.  It was healing.

            “How will he get out, Mom?” Ellen asked as I removed my kuspuk in the heat of the sun.

            “His soul isn’t there anymore,” her mom answered.  “In the end days, the grave will not hold him.”

            Mourning is a process.  I won’t claim this way is better, but it works better for me.

Walter would have passed the tree his cross was made out of multiple times on his way up and down the river as late as this spring when he went out on the ice to catch trout.

Walter J. Slwooko
1/2/1954-7/2/2020