I'm Going Home

It's been a dozen years since I last set foot on the silty ground of my homeland, and my reason for returning home now is an unhappy one. There does come a time when one returns home, be it a physical place or the metaphoric bosom of one's family, for weddings and funerals.

My last homecoming would also have been for a funeral had I not already scheduled a half-day layover there on the way back from Boston (another of my homes) with my then boyfriend so that my Bubi (grandmother for the goyim out there) could meet him. She died a few weeks before then so instead I toured him around my childhood.

The plane flies on and I do not want it to arrive in that I do not want to face the reality of the next few days. We Jews do it right--burial within 72 hours, sitting Shiva for a week in the home, covering the mirrors, and rending the clothes. Mark the time. Mark oneself as a mourner.

Grief is powerful. I've felt it since I heard the news. Felt the shock melt in to the loss, the nevermore of it all. Felt the weight in my chest, my heart. Felt the awkwardness of the words coming out of my mouth as I passed on the news. Felt the strange fatigue as the timeless hours rolled on waiting to bury my dead.

My brother Tom will be buried in the same silty Minnesota earth (for whatever the geographical construct is worth) as my Bubi and Zadi (grandfather for the goyim), and my dad. My mother was cremated with some of her ashes being buried with my dad, some being scattered at Como Lake, and the rest on Mount Rainier, so that I can see where she is (some days at least) in my current homeland.

Written on a plane Monday, August 22, 2011

Thomas Kientzle July 7, 1968-August 17, 2011

There is nothing like death to make everything else in life seem trivial.

I first met my brother Tom in the days leading up to our mother's funeral. Our mother had had to give me up for adoption at birth, given she had only told her parents (with whom she lived) two weeks before my birth that she was pregnant. A year later, pregnant with Tom, she married her husband and then went on to have four more boys.

We had those days around the funeral, some phone conversations, my second trip to Texas where we had some quality time together, and then he and his wife Becky's stop in Seattle before cruising to Alaska. Too little time.

We had talked about the six of us doing a sibling trip to Minnesota after Tom and Becky moved back there. I thought we could go around and show each other the Important places from our childhoods. But somehow we never made the time. And now there is no more.

Autumnal

"Autumnal–nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day… Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it. Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses…deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth–reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke."
Rosencrantz and Guidenstern are Dead
Tom Stoppard

I've been starting Autumn at the start of August for a number of years now. It makes the fact that the leaves start changing (and I've seen them already change) and the days start to get shorter more bearable. Summer days here are so long that when the daylight starts to drop off, it really drops off.

Of course, this year more than others summer has been reluctant, which makes its end even harder. To celebrate the end of summer, I jumped in to Crescent Lake out on the peninsula. Cold, clear water. Lovely way to celebrate summer.