Had a dream come through while down in FL about birds in the sky. The next day I captured these vultures at Blue Springs while visiting with the manatees
My grandmother and I went out to our pond. The sky was luminous. Sun behind the thick layers of clouds made their outlines glow and hum. Their edges were holographic.
We went to a spot where there was a perfect rectangular break in the clouds-- where you could only see clear blue. There were two sky eagles sitting side by side on a cloud perch, peering down at us.
I could see them but she couldn't. They were talking to both of us but only I could hear. Their words came through their eyes. They told me about a specific story in our family line beginning with her and ending with me.
She turned to me and said that she lost her son at 4 months old. I saw a flash of her mother holding a bloody dead child just about half-way through development. Dirt on top of it, being buried near the flowers.
It was in that moment that I understood our lines crossed. Both mothers of loss.
I saw the path she went down. At a time when there was very little support to process the death of a child, she buried the grief and pain and continuous mourning.
I saw how our collective grief shapes our parenting in similar ways. I'm the light to her dark. I can see in ways that she wasn't able to. I am her eagle eyes.
Eyes that are turned to deep medicine work to help my lineage heal from our heartbreaking losses.
No one really talks about parenting after loss. No one shares how much it shifts and shapes your relationship with living children. No one mentions the resentment or overwhelm or days filled with deep pools of pain.
I think on some level I'm blessed living in a time where I was able to hold my dead son and say goodbye to him on my own time. I've had older women tell me that doctors took their stillborn babies from them thinking it was too much for them to handle because sentiments were different back then.
Always closing our eyes to the truth of life, aren't we?
These sacred scavengers doing the good work of composting death into the richness and substance of life
