Saying goodbye to Big Bear

I got a call on September 2, 2009 saying that Big Bear, the man on the cover of my book had died. The funeral was on Sunday in Mill City, a two hour drive from Portland. It was held on top of the same mountain and in the same graveyard as War Eagle’s service, very much in the wilderness and beautiful. After I parked, a woman came up to me. Are you Karen Banfield, she asked?  When I said yes, she threw her arms around me and wept hard. Then said, I can not thank you enough for writing that book. It made me laugh and cry. I am so happy to have it now.

 

In that moment, all the work I’d done to write and bring the book into the world felt completely worthwhile.  Hers was the greatest most heartfelt gift I could receive.

 

The weather was dramatically undecided. The wind blew hard and then stopped, the rain pounded, the sun came out, then it started all over again. Big brawling gusts of wind knocked everything over; umbrellas went up and just as quickly folded down, the sun got hot and cold. It was crazy. People could not stay dry.

 

The funeral fell to the oldest brother Red Wolf. Sadly, he put away Native American ritual and read bible scripture. I was surprised and disappointed that he had not honored tradition, but knew the pressure the family was under. Everyone welcomed me. It was heart-warming to see them all again. Everyone I had known was there and it touched me. I got up and spoke about Big Bear’s loving nature, as did several others who battled the elements to be heard. The whole thing was like remembering a dream or another lifetime. It was like reliving the last funeral in many ways.  

 

Later we drove to a reception where it was thankfully warm and dry. Most of the folks I met wanted to talk about the book. I asked one couple where they’d heard about it and they said that Bear carried it everywhere he went. Look, I’m on the cover of a book, he told them, proudly displaying the jacket.  I learned that NO one in the immediate family had read the book. They were stopped by reading difficulties or found the content too sad to face. 

 

At the reception, the hostess brought out a big pot of spaghetti. I listened as a woman sitting near me cautioned her husband, who was wearing a pale silk green shirt. No way you’re dishing your own spaghetti, she said, you’ll get spots on your shirt.

She made him a big plate, then reached for something with her left hand while holding the pasta in her right. As she stretched, the entire plate slipped and fell over my head, into my hair, down my neck, over my shirt, onto my pants and finally to the floor in big vomit-like globs. It was a meat sauce with lots of hamburger grease and tomatoes.  I went to the bathroom where the hostess offered a shower, I’ll bring new clothes, she said, but I had a different idea.

Driving home I wondered whose spirit dumped the pasta. I have been in a crazy bad luck time. I sliced my finger deeply in the trunk of the car, Bear died, pasta bath and last time I tried to read for a client my spirits were missing, so I could not offer one word. Maybe there is a spirit convention someplace and all my protectors and helpers left to attend. Maybe they are all in Hawaii drinking moon nectar and getting high on fireflies. This has happened before. It’s such an odd feeling. They do come back; at least they have in the past, makes me more than a little nervous though.

All in all, it was a good day, it was a sad day, it was a day of joyful reunion and it was a greasy wet stinky spaghetti day.