Back to Poems
Mother began the process of dying nearly ten years before her actual death. In 1976 she found herself virtually stranded in the inhospitable urban community of Quincy, Massachusetts, where at age 67 she was unable to find work or friends, although she had always before had plenty of both. She realized that it was time to prepare for death, but to the end she fought the idea that she was "old"-especially she refused to be helpless. So she picked up all her belongings, packed her car, and drove alone to Cherokee Village, Arkansas, to be with her brother and sister and their families. It was her last cross-country trek, and Cherokee Village was the last outpost of the Eastman family of that generation, who had moved there from Ohio.
When she did die in 1986 at the age of 77, Mother had lost her continence and her reasoning; the only thing she had not lost was her spirit, and her refusal to accept powerlessness. It was only after every last joy had been drained from her life-through institutionalization and drugs-that she finally gave up the ghost. In those last weeks, she let go of the battle and chose to die.
Mother, I would dissect your death
To make a point,
A point of courage or of failure or of spirit
Or of all three at once.I would say,
"She was, since a very early age,
An artist
And a Gaul with Welsh blood and Indian spirit,
A daughter of pioneers" -
One possible epitaph. Or
"She was an anarchist and a mystic and a registered Republican,"
Like the other Eastmans
Who raged at injustice, knowing their place in the stars
And mistaking the stars for home.Are you home now?
I like to think so, to think that you are finally
In a familiar place.
Death was never a problem,
It is your life you leave me with.I am still searching for an obituary
Or a fitting memorial
For what is gone,
But I am already bored with that,
As surely you are, too.But since you always loved propriety
As a harness for wildness,
I'll keep trying, I have always tried
To fit your etiquette,
To meet your requirements,
The requirements of breeding
(Not tradition as you thought),
And the grace of ritual, not formality.
Some kind of celebration is in order
And I want to be with you.I call the Indian woman Ipowoya
Who sent me your address in a dream,
A grandmother with pocked face
And bandana-bound head,
Sturdy and stern like Grandma Eastman
But gentle like you and
Like the men in our family.In our family the men are dreamers
And the women are fighters,
But in this new land your father is brave
And your mother is gentle.
It is a land where men are warriors
And women are grandmothers.
They will take care of you at last
And take you to the ocean.Your daughter makes peace.
I will pay $195 to place your ashes
In an Anglican garden,
And all the old white women of Cherokee Village
Will sing songs of another century, the nineteenth,
At your memorial.Shall I tell them that I love you better than 13,
The way I did when I was a child
And you called me
Your "little papoose"?
- Sally Clay
May 6, 1986
Back to Poems
