Page 125 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

that I had not yet buried the squirrel–who was, even then, lying in ritual state up in my room. Jean

knelt by the table.

“Strange,” she said. “It seems like it’s breathing.”

When I woke the next morning, the squirrel was ready. Her body had flattened in the night. She had

completed her dying. I took sequoia needles and pine cones and placed them over her body. I lay an

acorn over her eyes. Now on my table she wore the energy of the restful dead.

I dug a grave in our garden and cleaned out leaves and twigs. Just before the burial, I considered

keeping some part of the squirrel with me as remembrance. I knew that humans have used parts of

animals for millennia, as we obviously still do now for the leather shoes and gloves I wear. Still I was

unsure. I asked permission, and felt an assent. With a small knife I cut her tail and two paws. It was

gritty, but familiar and ancient.

I found myself softly humming a prayer as I placed her still-­‐soft body in the earth and surrounded her

with acorns and pine needles from oak, eucalyptus and sequoia trees. I sprinkled holy water from the

sacred well of Brigit in Ireland. I closed the grave, and the earth took her. For a marker I put a colorful

mosaic stepping stone an artist friend made years ago.

I sat in the garden by her grave. Just sat, looking at apple blossoms and a honeybee. I looked at the sky,

and the birch tree. I looked. The entire earth was strung together. I could feel it; I was of it. This was

the field of love, mended. This was what was possible.

The squirrel buried in my garden must have been a grandmother many times over. Squirrels mate and

bear young the first year of their lives. If she lived her life expectancy of about five years, there were

four generations behind her. I wonder about her paws and tail in my room. I know this is an ancient

human practice, yet there was nothing in my experience, or my urban childhood, which spoke of this.

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