Fools Crow & the Woman Crawling to the Moon on her knees

We arrive deep into a clearing where Fools Crow and his group of healers sit in a circle around a fire waiting. They’re chanting in Lakota. Fools Crow rises to greet us; he is a lovely man with heavy wrinkled skin in the kindest formation of creases I’ve ever seen; his long braid runs down his back; he wraps Paul in a bear hug and holds him like a jolly Buddha until Paul sobs in his arms. The elders around me nod with approval.

Fools Crow speaks mostly Lakota but one of the elders translates for him. He and Paul chat about how Paul is feeling; how his gut aches but he is happy to be here with them. After awhile we enter a teepee. The tiny tobacco bags Ernie sent are arranged in the middle of the circle. Several elders join us in the teepee. They pass a pipe. We smoke its medicine. Everyone chants in Lakota. Paul sits in the middle of the circle. I feel at ease; relieved of a burden; I have delivered him here; a transference of debt. 

Fools Crow speaks in Lakota to Paul who suddenly seems to understand him; they agree about something in the rising smoke of the teepee; Paul agrees to be healed; songs lift up and flow around our circle; transform into wisps of smoke rising from the tops of our heads. Paul sings along in Lakota with Fools Crow. I’m sure he doesn’t know this language but he sings it perfectly, echoing Fools Crow’s voice. I close my eyes. There is drumming. The air is heavy with tobacco. Someone shakes a rattle beside me. I open my eyes to see Paul standing and Fools Crow shaking a rattle ferociously in circles around Paul.

My tired spirit lifts up and floats out of the top of my head, soars over the trees and plains of the bloody slaughter of South Dakota; then east to follow the Mississippi down to its drainage along the Gulf. I fly above the water oaks of Long Beach and down along the sand beaches across to Cat Island where the water is blue and grey; fathoms deep; I drop into it, making no waves, no splashes, sliding deep into the cool bottom of my endless Gulf to rest upon the sandy floor where a single fresh water spring bubbles up cold and icy against my toes.

The healing ceremony lasts 40 years. No 40 days. No 40 minutes. I couldn’t know. Time bends backwards and then twists on top of me. I see my blonde baby girl and reach out to touch her; realize I am lying down in the Teepee and someone is dancing over me. I reach up to touch them and fall into a deep canyon of time where I see layers of future lives; where I am older and a different man is beside me with two children holding our hands; pulling us towards a yellow house with green shutters and a porch. I am happy about this house. I adore these children and this man beside me. I am sick to my stomach and roll over to puke in the dirt. I realize the ceremony is over and I am alone in the teepee. When I walk out I see a younger man with deep dark powerful eyes and a long black braid down his back; he is tending the fire outside the teepee and watching me; he invites me to sit with him.

He tells me that Paul has taken a walk with Fools Crow and will return soon. We sit in silence watching the fire but I hear someone chanting in Lakota and realize his mouth isn’t moving; he is silent; yet I can hear him louder than I can hear my own thoughts. My hands are shaking and I put my head down on my knees. He reaches over to touch my head; puts his entire hand across the top of my head and holds it there. I fall over to rest on the ground and he releases me; smiles kindly at me and nods for me to rest there. I curl up like a child and fall into another dream. I lift my eyes to see a black crow flying overhead. The crow speaks but I cannot understand what he says. I follow him; we rise up through millions of stars and moons to look down upon a single globe of blue and green; of water and land with long strings of light circling it from top to bottom; you live here, says the crow pointing to a square patch of vivid green with strands of tiny lights spreading out across its darkness.

Much later Paul and Fools Crow return; Paul joins me at the fire. He is elated; energized; strong. He shows me what Fools Crow has given him; it’s a rock wrapped in blue felt on a leather necklace. This is my healing rock, he says. Fools Crow told me to always wear it. I’m healed, Sue. I feel it.

Fools Crow stands over me. Walk with me, he says. I take his hand; follow him down a long dirt path between trees where the land lifts up to crush me. You are very strong, says Fools Crow in broken English; yet I understand him perfectly. He continues: This is why Paul chose you. But you must be flexible. You must bend or you will break. Observe the trees. You understand the land. You understand the Crow. Study these things and you will learn what you need to know.

I nod.

Paul has long ago chosen this path and you chose to help him die, he says as we walk. Quit fighting. Let go. He is ready.

He says he wants to live, I whisper.

This is his way, says Fools Crow. I’ll help him cross when he’s fully ready. He fights for you.

Then looking at me: Don’t talk to Paul about what I’ve said.

He hands me a small smooth pebble. I wrap my hand around it; feel its heavy heat.

As we walk back to the Teepee, my throat swells, begins to throb. My arms and legs grow heavy, heavy as the rock inside my pocket. I need to sit. 

At the Teepee, Paul is awake; he looks up at me and smiles an enormous gracious smile; kindness fills his face as he gazes at me. “I’m healed, honey, I’m healed. Thank you for bringing me here,” he whispers into my ear. I lean into him; my spine has turned to liquid; a river of hot water pours down into my head and drenches my back. I reach behind to touch my shirt and feel its wetness; but realize my hand won’t move from my lap and that my shirt is dry; that I have no shirt; that my arm has turned itself into a large feathered wing; the wing of the crow.

We sit around the fire as the light fades from the sky. I can’t remember how to stand, “I’m so tired,” I say to Paul.

“I know,” he whispers, holding me tightly; “Just rest.” He dips his hand into the smoke and wraps me in fire. I burn. I hear the elders speaking to Paul but I don’t know the words they speak. My hands become very large and heavy; I’m unable to move them. My feet become water oozing across dirt. Paul rocks me. Someone sings in Lakota; his voice becomes the voice of the crow; and later the evening call of the owl; my father calls me to tread water beside him. Never fight the water, he says; it is always your friend; he glides away from me towards shore and suddenly becomes a white gull lifting above water. 

I try to follow him but Paul is standing me on my water feet. We are walking to the van with my arms spread out like wings on the shoulders of strangers. Never fight the water I am telling Paul who is trying to listen. But my voice has lifted away from us and is now a low raspy sound like someone scratching nails on sandpaper. As they lift me into the van I see Fools Crow standing by the fire looking at me; his face cracks into a wide deep smile so old it breaks me apart. He tosses something to me; it tumbles across the fire then wraps me in searing heat. Lightning bugs! I say without speaking: My lightning bugs! He nods and says: Yes! Open your palms!

I will. I do. I understand, I try to say; he laughs and opens his palms and a million lightning bugs lift towards heaven. I watch them swirl into stars.

I am shivering as we ride the dirt roads to our car; but I feel relieved of all necessary burdens; all the meds, IV schedules, vitamin instructions, healers’ notes, doctor’s advice, nursing guidance lift away and soar off into the Badlands; I shiver as they exit; feel grateful and opened up. Paul puts his hand on my forehead; you’re burning up, he says. I am happy for him.

We lift into my car and Paul drives us slowly to a small rustic hotel we’d seen earlier. I slip into dreams inside the small bed with the colorful quilt inside the cozy room with wood paneled walls and a fire in the fireplace. I hear Paul on the phone telling his mother how well he is; how happy he is to be able to take care of me for once; he tells her I’ve got a fever and have lost my voice. He will get me some soup he assures her as I slip under the steamy covers; my throat a wall of fire; my head a massive wave rolling towards shore; my palms wide open and burning up.

In my dreams a raven pierces my shoulders with its sharp claws and lifts me to the mountains; we cross the Ragged Range and land in the tundra at the top of Raspberry Creek; I sit at the cool edge of a deep lake where the raven becomes a man with a long braid dancing around me, shaking a rattle; taking my hand to guide me into the dark cold water; we follow its downward sloping bottom until we rest along the smooth rocks and pebbles; then gaze up towards its surface; the weight of water heals you he says. I’m amazed at the ribbons of sunlight that reach so far down into this dense world. Rest here, he says; sleep inside of the deep. I wake up shaking with fever in the dark cabin; asking God to take me.

I wake up again as we drive into the parking lot of our Colorado apartment and realize our windshield is covered in ash; ash of the dead; ash of ancient spirits; ash Wednesday. What is it? I ask Paul. He is satisfied with himself to have driven the long drive home without my help; he is smiling more than I’ve seen in months. It’s a volcano, he says; a volcano in the northwest. How have I missed Ash Wednesday and Fat Tuesday and the surprise of Easter Sunday at St Thomas Church by the Mississippi Sound; where has it all gone? I ask in my fever whisper. When is Ash Wednesday?

I turn to face the west and fall into a dream; days go by. I walk along the western edge of the world; tall men with long dark braids guide my steps; carry me to the edge of the volcano; this will cleanse you says Fools Crow tossing me into the molten fire; ash shoots up from the top of my head. I wake up coughing a deep old cough from something heavy in my lungs; it’s the ashes I say to Paul; it’s the ashes of the dead.

It’s pneumonia, says a doctor giving me an antibiotic. Friends arrive to care for us both.

In my fever I ask Paul: Are you attaining the heart of Christ by allowing your body to disintegrate completely while your spirit still lives within it? Yes, this is true, he says; very true.

Later when Kathryn visits and I ask her this question; she nods and says it feels true. She says I have agreed to witness the disintegration of form and the emergence of spirit. I try to grab hold of her words as she speaks but fever slips over me and I sink into the deep cold lake to rest upon the smooth pebbles and gaze up again; in awe of the distant light.

I emerge from the trance of my sick days carrying the weight of Paul’s disintegrating body into my daily routine. It is my fault that he lives beyond his termination point and I ask for constant forgiveness. (Excerpted from my newest book: Woman Crawling to the Moon on her Knees)

- By Sue Frederick author of Water Oak: The Happiness of Longing; Bridges to Heaven: True Stories of Loved Ones on the Other Side www.SueFrederick.com