who will come for me?

By: Sharon Oxendine

In the end will someone say they want to be by my side, touch me with warm gentle hands, guide me on my journey, sit still and listen as I go near the edge of the world,
Anoint my hair with lavender oil and begin to wrap my body in a traveling shroud?
Will they know the way to gently wash my body after life has covered my soul with small pieces like ashes from a fire gone cold?

Will some one bend close and whisper in my ear that it is all right for me to leave and listen closely to my regrets, feel my longing to stay and cry with me for all the times in life I did not fight back or stand up or sit down?

I hope there will be water, cool and mineral tasting in brown earthen jars
And windows open with a breeze blowing, the smell of fresh cut grass.

I hope my last words will express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for life and that I will not shutdown from fear of the Angel of Death.

I want to look forward to seeing those who have gone before me and the multiface of God, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Gandhi, Black Elk and Martin Luther King.

I pray that I will sit as still as I can and feel the life force leave my body and not cling to my daughter.

Play music for me, I want to hear the Muses sing with their sweet golden harmonies Appalachian songs and Irish ballads and hear the husky voiced notes of Emmy Lou Harris one last time.

I want sunshine to come through the windows and fall across my grandmothers quilt and I want to see my dog’s ears peeking over the bed and lay his chin close,
while my lover curls beside me and rubs my back in small circular motions and I will dream of the mornings we awoke early to go to the tailgate market and the smell of bread, coffee and vegetables.

Please bring drums and beat them slowly to an old and ancient beat, do not stop even if I cry.

I will slowly sit up, smell the sage burning, look at my altar of feathers and stones and close my eyes and wait for those who will come, for those who will come soon.

by sharon oxendine

A note from Sharon Oxendine, author of Who Will Come for Me?:

I am a Lumbee Indian from Lumberton North Carolina residing in Weaverville, North Carolina for the past ten years. I have previously been published in several anthologies and have developed a chapbook of my own work titled The Broken-Beauty Trail. I have facilitated many workshops in North and South Carolina on American Indian spirituality.
The poem Who Will Come For Me was inspired by the deaths of several friends from cancer. The most recent being an established artist, Bonnie Temple Cassara, who asked me to do an Indian ceremony at her funeral service. After watching and participating in the process of Temple’s transition I felt called to transition in my own life. I felt called to quit my job and find meaningful work, which I currently have, to begin to open my heart to people who are transitioning into death, a place of fear for me that goes back to the time my brother died when I was four years old, and to begin to work on my own creative process. I continue to be called to sit with those who are crossing over from life into death and the question of how we die has become so prominent for me lately that I begin to try to write from a place in my heart as if I were leaving all that I loved in the world.

I would like to dedicate this work to the men and women who held Bonnie Temple Cassara and comforted her Spirit as she made her transition into the afterlife. I also honor all the people who work in Hospice, do grief counseling and all those who are brave enough to stay and walk through the pain, the fire, and the final transition. Most importantly I dedicate this work to my life partner Tommie Laughrun and the Women of the Lotus Spirituality circle.
[ Sharon@mtnmicro.org ]