I.
“You shouldn’t have brought those babies here.”
Sitting in the familiar ICU waiting room, my non-native mother chided me for doing something so natural in my community. I brought family with me as we begin to mourn… again.
This, too, is a rhythm familiar, solacing, and isolating in the desert.
II.
Have you been initiated?
Death is at once taboo, and an intimate club we all will become familiar with.
If you know, you know.
There are patterns in grief and none of us are given a safe passage.
Tell me their stories, share your tears. Maybe, the comfort I seek is cradled in your memories.
IV.
Covid-19, the blessing.
After 16 years of needing independence in a relationship, unwilling to bend into one another, unsure of where we stood, the virus forced us into a home.
We cooked, cleaned, laughed, and loved. Almost two years we finally lived as a family. We were happy. Happiness had us talking about a third baby.
If not now, when?
V.
My love.
Not yet. I can’t.
VI.
Covid-19, the destroyer.
An interruption. The unknown, and cautiousness. Then the itch to be out of this home and time and madness. We make promises to go to a birthday party. Almost two years of fear, masks, and sanitizer, and then we all were sick.
We watched as he got sicker. And then one day he stopped coughing and just slept. It wasn’t until I forced him to walk to the car that I realized he could not breathe. On a slope, my 5’4 body grasping his 6’2 swaying frame. I caught him, held onto him as we walked into the ER.
What do you say when all you can think of is fear and death? What do you say when you need to be positive? What does one do with the anger and
blame and guilt building up inside you?
12 hours of holding his hands. 12 hours of napping and small conversations. What do you say when it has been 12 hours since you left your two sick children at home alone, hungry and scared? He isn’t coming home.
That night I found out my ability to taste and smell were gone. What do you say when you can no longer taste what’s real?
Hours spent on research. What do we know now? Two years in, I need a miracle, and ask for prayers.
For 19 days, texts to 38 of his closest families and friends. Every day.
Be proud of me when you wake up. I am taking care of your people, babe.
I dream of the hospital entrance; when the tubes are removed is when he can come home. They wheel him to our car door, and we make an escape.
Even through my breath fog on the ICU window, I see him. How does one look so beautiful in death?
Unable to touch him, unable to breathe him, unable to bathe his body. I wear a mask and gloves when I say my final goodbyes.
IX.
“You shouldn’t have brought those babies here.”
But why shouldn’t they know the proper way to grieve?
Why not be alongside the many who love who you love?
Why shouldn’t they see how we take care of one another in death?
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Jennifer Juan is a Tohono O’odham creative who enjoys many types of art. She is a published author, a museum curator, an artist, and mother to two. Growing up on the Tohono O’odham Nation she imagined life was always more interesting beyond the boundaries of reservation life. It wasn’t until she was a young adult she recognized the incredible beauty, talent, and care found in the ways community is built at home. She is part of the Rez Girls Book Club which is starting to venture out into the creative writing world in hopes of publishing more Indigenous experiences.