Same as it Ever Was

Dor-Na held her father’s cold hand. She understood he was gone, but somehow holding his hand made her feel safer.

Ra-Del, the prayer woman, had been here for two days now. She had helped Mota wash her father, and Dor-Na had been allowed to comb his hair and beard after he had been wrapped in ferns and hide. Her two little brothers didn’t really understand what had happened, but they could tell Mota and Dor-Na were very sad.

Dor-Na had heard Mota and Ra-Del talking last night, and she knew that today the men from the tribe would carry her father away. They would put him on a bed of sticks and then they would burn it so he could ride the smoke to meet the Great Spirit.

Sometimes Dor-Na wished she didn’t cry so much.

She was nearly a woman now, and her brothers would look up to her even more now that their father was gone. Still, it did help make her heart hurt less, letting her pain wash out through her tears.

The prayer woman had said that Mota would have to pick a new mate, if she wanted to stay in the clan. Dor-Na guessed that meant she and her brothers would get a new father, but the thought made her feel even sadder.

She laid her head on her father’s lifeless chest, and wept.

** Love is a coin, and grief lives on its reverse. The bigger the love, the bigger the pain when we lose it--this is a truth that is as old as mankind itself.

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