GRIEVER'S DOSSIER // "most of my gifts lie with the dead"
~ with Autumn Fourkiller
What we have is each other. To learn from, to learn with. To witness, to see. To nod and stay present, and then maybe offer something back—even if it’s simply more presence. This is what the GRIEVER’s DOSSIER series is about.
If memory serves (it doesn’t always), I first read Autumn Fourkiller when she was a writing fellow on Ann Friedman’s AF WKLY newsletter. When I eventually came upon her Substack, (where “Dear Abby meets Native Americana”), I swatted at the subscribe button like a Pavlov dog. In my ears, Autumn’s writing is a letter from a friend; it has a closeness, an easiness, an intimacy, an immediacy. Only what matters—but drawn out here and there around the corners so that all the shadows and backup vocals and tea lights and subtle side flavors have their moments, too. Because they matter, also. And Autumn really does interpret dreams—with levity, gravity, grace, and crazy wisdom. In fact, she’s interpreting one I sent her today; we did a little switcheroo. Obviously, I recommend a subscription and any available follow—that way you’ll know when a new essays hit, when her novel is ready for you, and when she’s trying out a new eyeshadow while cat-sitting.
WHO ARE YOU GRIEVING?
My Papa (pronounced Paw Paw), Larry Earl Miller, who has been gone from me since my junior year of college. He is/was my mother’s father. He died in the Northeastern Health System in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, about thirty miles from my hometown. He died from pneumonia, most likely, but really it was a mix of things – age, traumatic upbringing, the brain and spinal injury that nearly killed him when my mother was in college. I loved him like I will love no man ever again, perhaps not in any life.
WHAT’S ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE MEMORIES OF PAPA?
Wednesdays at the Sale Barn before, and after, I started school. I was a good but not enthusiastic student but I was sick a lot, coincidentally enough with the kind of illness that took over Papa’s body – that of the lungs, so I would stay with him while my granny went to work at the pie factory, for in those days Mrs. Smith’s really only made pies and cobblers and my momma went to work teaching high school, and at the Walmart jewelry counter, and the Hop-In convenience store.
Even hacking my lungs out, I could still make it to the sales with him, though he more often than not didn’t buy anything. I think we went because he was imagining a different life for himself – one where he could afford land, cattle, horses. A life like one in the Westerns he favored. After, we would go to B & J’s diner and order coffee with two creams and two sugars, over medium eggs, hash browns, bacon, and toast. He would squeeze my hand over the table and say – “You’re Papa’s girl.” Not a question, of course, but a statement. I would smile – probably a goofy little smile, for a while I did not have any front teeth at all, and always only one dimple (on the right side). And then we would eat and go home to take afternoon naps, mine in front of PBS Kids, dreaming, I think, of something important.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT PAPA’S LIFE?
He never hit his children. Even in the sixties and seventies. Even after all the violence he himself had endured in childhood.
WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT STATE OF MIND IN TERMS OF YOUR GRIEF?
Now, more than ever, I am glad he isn’t suffering. But I still miss him, of course, of course. I write about my father (also dead) a lot, but it is Papa whose loss cuts me too deeply to articulate. When he died, my father was also in the hospital, and he said – I am so sorry about your grandpa. I know how much you loved him. And I thought, this might be the truest thing you have ever said to me.
DOES DEATH HAVE A GIFT? DOES GRIEF? WHEN THINKING ABOUT PAPA’S DEATH AND THE EXPERIENCE OF YOUR GRIEF, WHAT DO YOU KNOW, SEE, FEEL, OR EXPERIENCE NOW THAT YOU DIDN’T OR COULDN’T BEFORE?
Does death have a gift? I ask myself that daily. I think so. I think, as a mystic, I have to believe that it does. Grief does, too. The reminder, even painful, that I have loved and been loved makes darker days worth it. I see how I couldn’t let myself feel at the time – I was still in school. My grandfather thought I was the smartest girl in the world. I had to keep going. I couldn’t let myself dissolve, even if I wanted to.
I also see how others treated that grief – he was just a grandpa, not a father, not a mother, why did I make such a fuss (a quiet fuss) over it? Why indeed.
WHAT DO YOU THINK PAPA WOULD HAVE SAID WAS HIS LEGACY? WHAT WOULD HE/SHE HAVE SAID ABOUT LEGACY + ACHIEVEMENTS IN GENERAL, AND THE NOTION OF MEASURING ONE’S LIFE THAT WAY?
I think he would have thought the idea of legacy was dumb, actually. And he would have been saddened by it. Poverty… it takes and takes and takes. It strips away some essential part of living, or it can. That happened to Papa again and again. I don’t think he would have liked that question at all – it would have stood as a reminder of all that could have been if things had been different.
But, I think he would have said, if pressed – my grandchildren love me. I’ve been married to my first wife for more than fifty years. I have two daughters. What more is there?
WHAT IS SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL THAT SOMEONE SAID OR DID OR SAW OR RECOGNIZED ABOUT YOUR GRIEF?
There are so many. Any kind of sweet physical touch – kisses on the cheek, hugs – helped me tremendously. We were all poor college students at the time, but someone made me a spaghetti dinner that I will treasure forever. Talking to other people with close relationships with their grandparents, the way they looked at me and said – I’m still not over it – did not make me scared for the future, but instead gave me a pathway forward.
WHAT DO YOU NOW SAY OR NOT SAY OR DO OR NOT DO WHEN YOU KNOW THAT SOMEONE IS EXPERIENCING GRIEF AND DEATH?
“It’ll pass.” Yeah, just never say anything like it.
WERE THERE ANY BOOKS, MOVIES, MUSIC, OR ART THAT HELPED YOU DURING YOUR MOST ACUTE TIMES OF GRIEF?
Essays from Scalawag’s “grief & other loves” series, of which I penned the inaugural essay.
This whiskey commercial – BEAR WITH ME.
The Lord Huron album – Strange Trails. Always, always.
Hank Williams, Sr. Any of his songs, really. Papa loved him AND we share a birthday!
Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” and “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurty.
IS THERE A LYRIC OR A MOTTO OR A QUOTE THAT’S BEEN WITH YOU DURING YOUR GRIEF?
”Yes I know that love is like ghosts
Oh, few have seen it, but everybody talks”
– Lord Huron, Love Like Ghosts
I also used the song title for my own essay!
And, “I love you more than one more day.”
HAVE YOU DEVELOPED ANY RITUALS OR TRADITIONS AROUND YOUR GRIEF OR AROUND PAPA’S DEATH?
Oh god. I think all my traditions are grief-stricken, in some way or another. Most, though not all, of my gifts lie with the dead. Anyway… that is all I’ll say.
WHAT’S YOUR MOST PRESENT NEED, DESIRE, OR HOPE RIGHT NOW, WITH RESPECT TO YOUR GRIEF?
That I never become bitter with regards to the time I had with Papa. That I can be angry or sad, but that I never regard it any other way than what it was – a gift.
WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU MOST WISH YOU COULD DO WITH PAPA, OR THAT YOU WISH YOU COULD SAY TO THEM? OR, IF YOU COULD SPEND ONE MORE DAY WITH PAPA, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
I wish I could show him both my diplomas. My PhD offers. My writing. The ways in which people regard me now. I wish I could kiss his cheek. I wish I could tell him that I’ve missed him every minute since he left. If we had one more day together, I’d do all of that, then I’d take him to breakfast, buy him a coffee. Get him a new belt, the works. Then we’d drive to the sale barn together… we might not have to say anything. I’d think – thank you for making me think I was capable of anything. I am trying to live a life. A good one. A special one. An ordinary one.
I promise, Papa. I promise.
DO YOU HAVE A GRIEVER’S “P.S.”? SOMETHING YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SHARE THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW TO ASK?
My grandfather was born in Ramona, Oklahoma. He called all of us by special nicknames, but he often just called me baby doll. He didn’t have a funeral, but was instead cremated, quietly, no real fuss involved, just as he requested.
Thank you Autumn. This is beautiful. I also felt very close to my grandfather and when he died a few years ago, my father said a similar thing as yours and how you wrote about that moment reminded me that yes, it was a moment when I probably felt most known or seen by him, that my dad was able to see the closeness that my grandpa and I had. Thank you for revealing your experience and through that, my own.