Yesterday, I responded to the question of what October means to me with a litany of all the things I've loved about it since childhood. And even though I felt guilty omitting it, I didn't want to bring down the mood of a light-hearted diary by mentioning the other thing October means to me — the most significant thing it has meant to me for twenty years now.
It's that day again. And this year, it's a milestone, a watershed, a landmark.
The twentieth anniversary of the day Butterfly Woman, my sister Kaye, walked on, though not by choice.
For those who don't know, she was murdered: twenty years ago this afternoon, in a [mostly] random act of brutal violence by someone completely unknown to her. I wrote about it here a few years ago; unfortunately, I did so for a specific series, and when I went to retrieve the link, I discovered that my diaries for that series have been deleted. I flayed my soul to write about them then, and I don't want to revisit that particular brand of pain today by writing about it again here.
Twenty years.
Two decades. The China anniversary, for presumably happier occasions — yet not an inapt metaphor. On this day of the year, I'm as brittle as the leaves that fall to the ground and swirl around my feet.
Twenty years. A generation. Time enough for a child to be conceived, born, attend kindergarten, graduate from high school, and enter adulthood. Perhaps even to have a child of his or her own.
And the world today is a very different place from the one that lost Kaye twenty years ago.
But some things transcend time, even over the course of years and decades and anniversaries and generations.
And so it is with this woman, now with me only in spirit, who for much of my life was the one real exposure I ever had to unconditional love.
My lodestone.
My family is big on the bargaining theory of "love": "If you do [X], I'll love you."
That's not love. That's using.
But Kaye was different.
Shy. Timid. Nicknamed "Mouse." She deserved to be born into a family that would cherish her little spirit rather than be consumed by fear and resentment over her health problems. She didn't get that; none of us did.
She was the oldest of us girls. She always felt that Anne, the middle one, was the beautiful one, and the brave one: the one who was always on, who outshone her and everyone else. I was just enough younger that I was not a part of that dynamic; I was simply her beloved little sister, and in a way, her surrogate daughter. Kaye never wanted Anne's spotlight; she only wanted a husband and a family and to be happy.
Eventually, she got the husband; a couple of years later, a daughter of her own. But her health issues and miscarriages made bearing another child dangerous, and so her dream of a larger family was brought to an abrupt end.
it was a different time, of course. Today, she probably could have had more children. But in the early seventies, the risks were too great.
In the meantime, she and her husband got religion — the religion of our parents. Fundamentalist Protestantism. She believed. She adhered. Our politics became completely divergent. But somehow, her beauty of spirit escaped, unwarped by the white man's religion, and she never donned its blanket of essential meanness, in every sense of that word. We mostly avoided certain topics, but there was always more than enough to talk about, and our interactions remained mostly unstrained by politics, religion, or the constant competitive resentments that marked and marred Anne's relationship with her.
In the twenty years since she was ripped from me, I've struggled with how to ensure that she is not only remembered, but that her life is recognized and afforded the meaning it so deserves, beyond my own memories. It's been a long, tortuous road, with sharp curves and switchbacks and steep dropoffs on the side. My own journey has been marked mostly by fits and starts, and stalls, and stops.
But there have been landmarks along the way. The twenty-year mark is a significant one.
There was a time when I thought my profession would afford me the chance, but reality showed that to be a mug's game, even before my health took my career. In recent years, circumstances have limited what I can do. Humbling, to say the least. But it showed me a way.
You see, I was not blessed — or cursed — with Kaye's essential goodness of spirit. I have to work at it, and I fail at least as often as I succeed. I know this about myself; I always have. But sometimes, forced humility brings you new opportunities — things that, blinkered by your earlier privileged status, would have remained invisible to you.
Things that matter.
Things like making sure children have enough to eat. Like making sure elders have heat to survive the winter. Like making sure that our peoples and cultures and traditions survive and thrive. Like making sure that we leave a liveable Earth to our children, even unto the seventh generation.
Things that get lost in the bright lights and soundbites of the political stage.
Things that are more fundamental than that, more necessary, more real, despite their invisibility in the public sphere.
With Kaye, what mattered was that someone needed something. She took the charge of being her brother's and sisters' keeper to heart. And she lived it every day of her too-short life.
A few years ago, around the time of her birthday, a mourning cloak showed up here, flying around my head repeatedly. I was feeling a bit lost right then, and it took me some time to understand that she wanted my attention, because she had something to tell me. Since then, mourning cloaks have shown up at unusual times — too often, just before a family member, whether two- or four-legged, walks on. For a while, I came to regard them with equal parts wonder and dread.
But other butterflies came, too: tiger swallowtails, monarch, an albino monarch, something entirely new this year that we can't identify. And the butterfly was such a perfect distillation of who she was: cross-pollinating what her ecosystem needed as a matter of course; bringing comfort, solace, and even joy to whomever needed it, all gently, as if on the flutter of delicate wings; lending beauty to the landscape by her very presence. It was at that point that she was transformed in my memories.
You see, our traditional names can change. It's not a requirement. But sometimes, circumstances and character change a person to a degree that their names no longer fit. And so for several years, now, I've thought of Kaye by another traditional name, Butterfly Woman. It fits her in ways that she never would have recognized in herself, but that are inescapable to anyone who truly knew her. And her inspiriting of Butterfly has become for me an annual lodestone, a talisman, a totem in our fullest sense of the word.
I'm going to try to honor the memory of Butterfly Woman again this fall and winter. And so, soon — very soon — I'm going to be asking you for help. Again.
Help to feed children and families and elders, members of some of our most economically depressed communities, who would otherwise go hungry.
Help to keep families and elders from freezing to death this winter.
Help to keep Indian children with the families who love them and the in the cultures that need them.
Help to keep Indian children and youth alive in the face of a suicide epidemic that is the worst in the nation.
It won't be today, but it will be soon. Very soon. Winter is coming, and our brothers and sisters need us.
And winter notwithstanding, Butterfly Woman will be right there, wings fluttering softly against my shoulder, lodestone awakening my heart, reminding me of my responsibility to help keep them safe and well.