Today I began to list out all of the people who have passed
away in my town this year. I began doing this because there have been two
funerals this week already. I live in Unalakleet, Alaska, a town of about
700-750 people. Everybody knows everybody and everyone’s business. We wave to
one another as we pass by on the streets. We all greet one another at the gym
during basketball games and wrestling tournaments. We look out for each other’s
children when they are playing out or running across the street without looking
both ways.
I have lived here since I was 13-years-old, when my grandma
pretty much adopted me after my parents divorced. I have seen many elders pass
away and have babysat many of the new babies. I have witnessed, first-hand, the
effects of climate change. I’ve noticed the winters becoming warmer, the snow
piles becoming shorter, and the river ice going out earlier and earlier in the
spring.
I have seen our culture dying out over the years and it
saddens me. Just in this last year alone I have counted 23 people passing away.
That is about 3% of our people! Many of the people who have passed away were
elders, but there have also been young people in the mix.
There have been two suicides: one teenage boy and one young
man in his late twenties. Just recently one of our young men was run over in
Florida. Another man in his 30’s was shot to death when he attacked another man
in his house with a knife. One man died while driving between villages in the
middle of winter. I’m not sure of the details, but alcohol was involved and
most likely he froze to death. Unhealthy living habits also took lives:
diabetes, lung cancer, liver disease, etc.
Last winter a well-loved and respected elderly lady
suffering from Alzheimer’s disease walked out of the village in a winter
blizzard and went missing for months. A search and rescue team of more than 120
volunteers did a shoulder to shoulder sweep of town to no avail. Even in
less-than-optimal weather conditions: wind gusts of 40 mph, volunteers swept
the town, digging up snow hills, looking in sheds, porches and unused vehicles.
Facebook posts were shared. Phone calls were made. Prayers were said.
Day-in-day-out. Search and rescue dogs were flown in to sniff out the entire
town as well as the surroundings of town. We all feared that she may have
gotten lost and began walking up the river and fell through the ice. It wasn’t
until the springtime that bird hunters came across her body on the tundra just
north of the village.
Each person who passed had his or her own deep connection to
the village. Some were parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, commercial
fishermen, sock knitters, joke tellers, a place for others to go when they had
nowhere else to go, a best friend, a water-hauler, a school cook, a friendly
smile, a road grader, etc.
With each passing elder more and more traditions have been
stolen from us. When my classmate took his life, many of us were left with
questions. We had not realized that he suffered from depression. The accidents
that took a few lives had us gasping for breath. Young children have been left
without a mother or father.
In recent years death has been coming in threes. Everyone in
town will tell you so. When news unfolds that a person has passed away after a
long period of no deaths, people fear to hear about the next two people who
will pass. It may be someone you have just seen at the post office. It may be
your grandma who you thought was too stubborn to let go. It may be your
classmate who secretly struggled with alcoholism and had nowhere to turn for
help.
Many people tend to say, “He lived a long life” or “At least
she is no longer suffering.” It’s so easy to say or agree with these, yet so hard
to let go. It becomes harder to collect stories from suffering elders: whether
it is due to them being hard of hearing, their memory loss, or other ailments. Many
of us fear to ask questions because we don’t want to be a burden on them.
In some cases, death is so sudden and unexpected that we
don’t get the chance to say, “I love you” or “good-bye”. We don’t realize that
our last conversation would be at A.C. the day before the life-stealing heart
attack. We never realize that our words can change a person’s mind about
living. We don’t realize that sometimes all it takes is a smile or a “hello.
How are you doing?”
In some cases the pain is not felt right away when a person
passes. Sometimes the pain does not come for years. I was only five-years-old when
my maternal grandpa passed away. I didn’t know he was gone forever. Now that I
am an adult I find myself wondering if I would be more self-confident with a
strong male role model in my life. I find myself wanting my great-aunt Alice to
be at her house when I need advice. I want to go visit my great-grandma, Anna,
and ask her about her childhood. I want to see her hanging strips in her smoke
house and driving her four-wheeler through town again.
In small towns, deaths are felt by all. In small towns one
person’s life IS a huge deal. In small towns, when people begin dying in the
double digits in one year, you begin to worry. You begin to think the end is
coming. With deaths coming left and right your hopes sink through the crawl
space.
Our only hope now is to embrace those closest to us and to
talk to our elders while they are still around. Our only hope is to continue
the traditions passed onto us. Our only hope is to build one another up with
compassion.
Life is far too short, but we make of it what we can.
