i do not realize what has happened until i am in my car and suddenly overwhelmed by a heaviness in my chest.
i feel strange for a moment, and then i start crying – and, it is not pretty. it is heaving bitter sobs, hot tears of grief streaming down my face as i hold the steering wheel with my sore hands while jóhann jóhannsson plays in the background.
i find myself sitting in the cemetery on the reservation by the memorial for indigenous soldiers. my grandfather’s name is on a memorial in a reservation back in Ontario. but not here. and yet, the land knows him. he died here in this city. i think of my grandfather and the hardship he walked through, the hardship my father walked through, so i could sit here in front of this memorial.
when i was in school, one of the elders told me that each day we live is an act of resistance. i was not born on the reservation, raised on the reservation like my father and his father, but i know their pain.
i also know their stubborn refusal to simply lay down and die.
the daughter of my father, the daughter of my mother.
i sit with the land and the names of the soldiers, praying until my hands are freezing. i then get in my car and go buy bannock to share with people i know, because i have to turn the grief into something, so that it does not settle as bitterness.
there’s this quote i like from a dutch priest who was named henri nouwen:
“when we break bread and give it to each other, fear vanishes and god becomes very close“
my father used to make the best bannock. maybe one day mine will turn out like his. but, not yet. not yet.
hospital vespers 