Meet You On The Other Side
Remember: “We're all just walking each other home”
One of my favorite shows ended last week. “Reservation Dogs” was a coming of age story that transcends biological age. Although it closely follows the lives of four Indigenous American teenagers, it also tenderly weaves the stories of their family, alive and dead, ancestors from the recent and far off past and even the semi-fantastical. It is a show about the evolution of ourselves, our communities, and our ancestors. It is a story of life. And death.
The series, created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, fittingly begins and ends with a death. When I began watching it in 2021, I was surprised by the intensity of my feelings witnessing these four teens grapple with the loss of a friend, a cousin, a brother. I found myself both drawn in and recoiling, afraid of the opening in me it would create, afraid of being pulled back into the throes of my own personal grief. But as I watched the characters struggle to find their own way through their feelings my grip loosened and gave way to receiving their friendship through the screen.
When the show ended, I cried. I mourned the loss of these imaginary friends, this companionship over the past several years. I tried to hold onto the incredible wisdom regarding death: that our ancestors exist amongst us and are in constant communication both to guide the living and to ask for support as they continue to evolve on the spiritual plane. I find nothing more true or comforting than this belief.
When I was studying at seminary around the same time as this show premiered, I was most moved by the foundational beliefs of Indigenous American spirituality around death. I learned that tribes view the departed as enduring ancestral spirits, occasionally offering assistance. There are no frightening ghosts; instead, ancestors are accessible to the living for guidance during times of need. Most surprising and curious to me was the belief that these ancestors continue evolving and growing after their passage from the corporeal to the spiritual.
When my brother Oscar died, I often wrestled with who he might be in the spiritual realm. Did he still walk with a limp? Was his eyesight 20:20, his lazy eye straightened and alert? Had he kept his impulsive and sometimes inappropriate sense of humor, his too loud laugh?
Part of me wanted to keep Oscar as he’d been the last time I saw him on Christmas Eve in 2019. I needed to keep him frozen in time as a comfort for my reeling self and emotions. I needed one constant amidst all of the change. But while watching Reservation Dogs I began entertaining and even welcoming a parallel world of the spirits, my ancestors, where they continue to evolve, thrive and love from a distance. Far from my childhood Catholic understanding of heaven, hell and purgatory, these ancestors are by my side in a new existence, a life of its own. A continuous connection between the deceased and the living, between ancestors and their descendants.
In one poignant scene toward the Reservation Dogs series finale, a deceased mother reunites with her daughter through the assistance of her cousin. The family dynamics are complicated and hard to explain here without writing another two pages for you, but the most important thing I want to share is that the deceased mother—a spirit, not a ghost, because as she says, “Ghosts are dumb!”--is stunted in her own growth on the spiritual plane until she is able to see that her daughter is cared for by the larger community. When the three women come together they are each able to move forward in their lives because they can see each other’s intention and selves, if not in form, then in heart. They are moved to evolve.
“We're all just walking each other home,” Ram Dass once said.” That home exists on many planes. Over the past several years, I have felt my brother's presence, often embodied by repeating numbers on the clock (11:11) or rainbows and prisms of light. I told a friend last week, whose brother also died in 2020 (we are forever bonded in that loss), that I’ve largely stopped talking about the signs as I worry I sound crazy or am seeing things. But the sense I’ve always received in these signs is one of assurance, a message that I am not alone, that he is guiding me or sometimes, as with the repeating numbers on the clock, that he’s poking and teasing me, the eternal little brother. And in that I feel a sense of calm and comfort, that maybe he gets to still be my little brother and tease me from that other plane, and I still get to tell him he’s a little annoying. And that I love him.
May we all continue to grow in that love.
Thank you Carla! I too was drawn to the idea of walking with our ancestors the first time I came across it. I was prepping for a theatre project about a Native American tribe. Thanks so much for sharing your love of the show - Reservation Dogs. I will now watch it! 👍🏻🙏🏻🥰
My brother died young over 30 years ago. I still think of him everyday. You've given me a new way to think. Thank you.