Ritual Bound

by Debra Coleman

Image by Vero Manrique, Unsplash

My brother, Wayne, couldn’t eat cake. Not the day he turned forty-one. Not the day after a delicate, complicated eight-hour surgery. He couldn’t puff out candles either. Ear-to-chin sutures on his right jawline replaced a large, aggressive tumor.
        Since he couldn’t eat cake, my sisters, Angela and Juliet, and I left his hospital room in search of a pint of sorbet. Elbow-to-elbow in a stray market nearby, we glanced at the meager freezer compartment, turned to each other, and asked, “Which one?” In unison, we pointed to Massimo’s Mango Sorbet. Back in Wayne’s room, his wife, Helen, stared at us, stunned. “How did you know this is his all-time favorite?” We were his sisters. We just knew.
        Helen took a break and left the four of us alone. My sisters each gave our brother birthday gifts—proper, wrapped gifts. I was not as prepared. Before leaving home, I’d grabbed a set of mini paper Tibetan prayer flags. On the drive to California, I’d knitted a little figure. It sat cross-legged in a lotus position. It had no facial features but did have little yarn dreadlocks sprouting out of the top of its head, with tiny beads and feathers woven in. I told Wayne it was my stand-in, to remind him I was always with him. My brother studied the little figure. “I know,” I blushed. “It’s really, really corny.” Finally, pronouncing each syllable as if it was its own word, he said, “Act-u-al-ly, I think it’s rath-er sweet.”
        My sisters and I found chairs while our brother dozed off. We sat in silence, gazing out at the rosy coastal sky. I couldn’t remember the last time we were alone like this. My sisters sensed it too, this precious time we were sharing. Juliet drew a large circle with her finger, as if to say, “Look, it’s just the four of us.” Angela pressed her hands together and bowed her head. We bowed our heads back to each other.
        This was the last time we’d all be together.
                                                                

Wayne died three months later. I was with him at his home, along with Juliet, Helen, and four other women who had been helping with his round-the-clock care. Angela was in her car, racing to see him one last time. I lost track of what happened immediately after the peacefulness of his death. But I know I was not peaceful. I remember being on the floor, crying— “howling” might be a more apt word. I squeezed under my brother’s bed as if to become a shadow. Or to fortress myself against the great cleave that was taking place. Had taken place. Finally, I heard a distant voice. “Where’s Debra?” One of the women floated her hand on my back, coaxing me out. 
        And then, with no apparent forethought, we began to clear the room of all signs of illness. Someone filled basins with warm water and almond soap. Others gathered towels and washcloths. In silence, we took turns washing Wayne’s feet, legs, arms, torso, face. We filled bowls with oil, scented with pine, and massaged it into his skin. Again: feet, legs, arms, torso, face. With each movement of my hand, as I massaged the oil into his skin, I could feel it, the friction between grief and healing, grief and healing, grief and healing. Anguish and soothing teetered, distress easing with each tactile pass over his body. This sorrow-filled ritual proved he was gone and showed me I could love him without end.
        After the water and oil, it was time to dress Wayne. Each piece of clothing was chosen carefully: hiking boots and socks for a onetime Yosemite junior ranger; an unworn tee-shirt emblazoned with a revered animal, the horse; his first-choice camping pants; the geodesic dome hat I’d knitted for him. His body would be cremated in these clothes. Until then he would remain at home. He couldn’t return to the vineyard he managed, but he could stay a while longer near his slope of organic dry-farmed tomatoes, the best seeds selected and saved for next season. He could linger on his acres with an ever-expanding vegetable garden, the berry patch and fruit trees, experiments in greenhouse designs, a circle of fledgling redwoods down the hill from his front door. During my visits, he’d point there and over there, describing his next project: an arbor, a stone wall, his future.
        We laid my brother on a large piece of turquoise cloth—a saturated turquoise, a fiesta turquoise—and surrounded his body with his sunflowers and grape vines. We added clippings from his collection of bamboo plants. We placed his medicine bag around his neck and laid his dog’s collar next to him. We collected more flowers and small stones and shells. I saw the miniature cross-legged figure I’d made for him sitting on the corner of his night table, so I scooped it up and tucked it into one of his pockets. We lit candles and arranged chairs around the room. For the next thirty hours, loved ones would be free to visit.
        I stood back, looked at Wayne, and felt overwhelmed by the sanctity of what I saw, by the beauty of it all. My shoulders eased, my eyelids fell half-mast, my lungs drew in. Fiery sunflower pollen scratched my nose, then fainter smells drifted my way: burning wicks, soil and sweat from his boots, pine oil swirled with cat-haired dust, musty boxed papers, an old bong.
        When the two men from the funeral home arrived the next day, they told us the coffin wouldn’t fit through the front door. “Don’t worry,” we told them. “We’ll take care of him.” Angela and my brother-in-law had arrived and joined us in Wayne’s room. We blew out the candles, and then began to wrap his body in the turquoise cloth. I’d been knitting something for him with hemp yarn, so we unraveled it and used the strand to tie the cloth around him. Feet, legs, arms, torso. Finally, we folded the cloth over his face.
        My breath left my body. I heard the collective gasp in the room.
        When we finished bundling my brother in blue, we picked him up and with some effort, carried him down the narrow hallway and out to the casket, gently placing him inside. The two funeral home attendants were standing at the periphery, watching. One of them started to cry. Someone lit a sage bundle and passed it from person to person to sweep around my brother. When it was my turn, all I could think to do was to walk in a wide circle around the coffin, around my brother’s body. It felt necessary to close that circle. One of the funeral men whispered, “That’s his oldest sister.”
        Helen stood at the head of the coffin and my sisters and I stood at the other end. One last look at my brother’s shrouded body, then a glance up at each other, and we closed the lid. All of us carried the coffin to the white unmarked truck parked in the driveway and slid it inward. We stood, watching as the truck disappeared, bearing my brother away.
        My silent letting go twined with comfort. I’d done more than stiffen to obligation. I had done my best.
                                                                

For the celebration we had in honor of Wayne’s life, I suggested we put together packets of his seeds for people to plant in their own gardens. Every April for fifteen years now, I sit in my garden and tend to the seeds of the seeds of my brother’s seeds. I know I don’t exactly have a piece of him with me, but I feel with each furrow I make in the ground, with each watering, with each staking, I am caring for the earth as he would. I am respecting his work as a farmer. I try to remember what he told me as I take care of his beans, tomatoes, peppers, sweet peas, and basil.
        And, of course, his sunflowers.
        Petaled mandalas of the garden, tracing the sun’s daily arc east to west, until grown old. Then, no longer moving atop gray-green stalks, all heads face east, bowing to autumn beds.

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Image by Audrius Sutkus, Unsplash