Dear brothers, dear sisters, if you die before me, then I will pay to put you in the ground. I will bury you near our parents.
And, once or twice a year, I will lug my old and battered self to your collective grave and apologize for winning the final spin of the Alexie Family Terminal Cancer Roulette Wheel.
17.
Reviewing
IN THE FUNERAL home, I told my sister that my mother looked better than she had in years—better than she had since our father had died, twelve years earlier.
“The undertaker did a great job with her makeup,” I said.
“He didn’t make her look pretty,” my sister said. “I did that.”
“Wow,” I said. “What did that feel like?”
“I felt like a little girl,” she said. “Like Mom was teaching me how to put on makeup again.”
“I don’t remember her teaching you that,” I said.
“Why would you remember that?” she asked.
“It just seems like a normal thing for a mother to teach a daughter,” I said. “And Mom rarely did normal things.”
“Well,” my sister said. “Mom taught us how to put on makeup by making us practice on Dad.”
“What?” I asked, and laughed. “You put makeup on Dad?”
“Yeah,” my sister said. “Lipstick, eye shadow, blush, and everything.”
“No way,” I said. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“Dad was okay with that?” I asked.
“He didn’t say anything,” my sister said. “But I think he wished he looked prettier in makeup.”
“What?” I said, and laughed even harder.
“Yeah,” my sister said. “This one time, he stared at his face in the mirror and said, ‘All that work and I still look like myself.’”
“That’s so funny,” I said. “Maybe Mom and Dad are doing each other’s makeup in Heaven.”
“That would be beautiful,” my sister said. “And silly.”
“If Heaven ain’t filled with gender-swapping Indians,” I said, “then I don’t want to go there.”
18.
Scatological
AFTER EVERYBODY ELSE left the funeral home—after our closest friends and family had said their private good-byes to my mother—I stayed behind to use the restroom.
As I squatted on the old toilet, I wept for the first time since my mother died. And then I shat. I wept and shat. And, yes, I am famously gifted as a weeper and a shitter.
My Alcoholics Anonymous friend—who remains nameless, of course, as do many other folks in this book—calls me Thunder Tears.
My siblings call me Dairy Queen because I have always filled up toilets like a human soft-serve ice cream machine.
Well, on that grief-stricken day, as my mother’s body lay only two walls away, I took the largest shit of my life. I expelled everything.
After I was done, I stood and looked at that shit cobra floating in the toilet, and I said aloud, “I’m gonna need Rikki-tikki-tavi to kill that thing.”
And then I noticed the handwritten sign on the wall above the toilet: Please be gentle with our toilet. The pipes are old. Be judicious in your use of toilet paper.
I was impressed with the undertaker’s vocabulary. But it was too late. I’d certainly been judicious with the toilet paper, but my shit was so large—so audacious—that I knew it would clog up that toilet and flood the bathroom.
Nobody wants to be the guy who clogs the toilet, let alone the commode only two rooms removed from his mother’s coffin.
I realized that I needed to break my own shit into pieces in order to make it easier to flush.
But I also knew that the toilet would still clog if I tried to flush all of the pieces at once.
So I wrapped my right hand in paper, reached into the toilet, and chopped my shit into four manageable fragments. Then, using my paper-wrapped right hand as a dam, I held three pieces out of the water as I flushed the toilet with my left hand.
And then I waited a few minutes for the old toilet to refill so I could flush the second piece of shit.
And then I waited for even more minutes so I could flush the third piece of shit.
And then, finally, after maybe five minutes, I was able to flush the last piece of shit.
And then I washed my hands with all the liquid soap in the world.
I walked out of the bathroom to see the undertaker waiting for me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I was embarrassed.
“Yes,” I said.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said. “You were in there a long time.”
He was genuinely concerned. I knew his empathy was real. I knew I could be honest with him.
I said, “I just took a grief poop like you wouldn’t believe. You ever seen a grief poop? Thing was big as a walrus.”
The undertaker touched my shoulder.
“Happens all the time,” he said.
He wished me well and said he would see me at the tribal longhouse the next day for my mother’s wake and funeral.
He walked me to the door.
He said another good-bye.
He wished me well again.
He patted me on the shoulder.
But he didn’t shake my hand.
19.
The Procession
THE UNDERTAKER DROVE my mother’s body to the reservation. But he didn’t use a hearse. No, he drove a black minivan converted into a more contemporary and fuel-efficient funeral carriage.
I guess death now has a smaller carbon footprint.
Behind the undertaker was the procession of seventeen cars filled with family and friends.
It took less than an hour to deliver my mother’s body back to our reservation.
I thought it would feel more epic.
But it only felt like a sad and brief commute.
20.
Nonfiction
WE BURIED LILLIAN Alexie on July 6, 2015.
We’d thought about burying her on the Fourth of July, but the funeral expenses would have doubled and tripled because of the holiday.
Yes, saying good-bye to a Native American woman would have cost us more on Independence Day.
21.
Blood
At my mother’s wake, A mosquito alights On my knuckle
And sucks and fattens On my blood.
I ponder smashing
The damn thing
So I can pretend to read My fortune
In the broken
Insect pieces.
But instead, I allow
That mosquito to fly Away, fat and drunk.
I don’t know if
I loved my mother.
I don’t know
If she loved me.
At my mother’s wake, Another mosquito alights On another knuckle
And sucks and fattens On my blood.
When it reaches
Maximum density, I smash
The damn thing
And read my fortune In the broken
Insect pieces.
One wing says, “Yes, You did love your mother.”
And another wing says,
“And, yes, yes, of course, Your mother loved you.”
But the dismembered
Proboscis shouts, “You don’t have to forgive Her sins or your sins
But it’s probably best If you give it a try, You blood bag of a son.”
At my mother’s wake, A third mosquito buzzes My ear. And a fourth
And a fifth and a dozen more.
They’re singing
For my mother.
It is only the female mosquitoes Who know how to speak, Who know how to sing,
Who know how to grieve.
So I stand at three in the morning In the tribal longhouse
And I hum and hum And hum along
Because I’m only a man
Who doesn’t know Any of the words or music To this death song.
22.