Dear Dad: A Final Stitch, for now
It's been almost a year since your death, and I am still grieving.
An Incantation Before Beginning
To the East
To my relations of Blood
To the lands of my Birth
To a Home I am still coming to know
To my brethren who tended their land long before my relations of blood settled there
I offer Medicine, of smoke & breath I offer Medicine, of mother’s milk I offer Medicine, of bean & water
To the South To all that is Possible To all our Dreams yet to be dreamt To a world once more in harmony with cosmic & chaotic Rhythms To the the day of The Red Deal, the day when Indigenous Resistence & Decolonial Struggle bring divestestment & the end of the occupation, the healing our bodies & reinvestment in our common humanity, & the healing of our planet & reinvestment in our common future
I offer Medicine, of smoke & breath I offer Medicine, of mother’s milk I offer Medicine, of bean & water
To the West
To my Ancestors familial & material & cosmic
To the Ocean & the Fog & the Wind
To that which is as old as the Land & is the origin of Life
To what is below the surface, what cannot be seen, what cannot even be imagined, what is Unknown & Unknowable
I offer Medicine, of smoke & breath I offer Medicine, of mother’s milk I offer Medicine, of bean & water
To the North
To all that has come Before
To Remembrances of remembrances
To the Gingko Tree, which is both young & ancient
To Hibernation & Recuperation, an ending & a beginning, the seeds of all that is yet to be
I offer Medicine, of smoke & breath I offer Medicine, of mother’s milk I offer Medicine, of bean & water
A note before sharing: This letter was written in the days following Thanksgiving 2021. I did not publish it then because I needed this letter to find my dad before I could share it here.
And we are still in the midst of a holiday season, one that requests us to be jolly & merry & celebrate. While I can experience joy amidst great sadness & enraging rage, celebration & jubilation seem nigh impossible. They are incongrous with a reality right at the surface, especially as omicron spreads & I remember my father’s final bout in the hospital right after Thanksgiving & how he had to live in terror all by himself because COVID was raging then too & my mom could not be by his side.
It, quite simply, is fucked that we are still in this terror, that our government is still failing us, that those with power would rather see us dead than thriving.
Dear Dad:
I’ve been meaning to write you for quite some time, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’ve been coming to the conclusion that the United States killed you, and I need a way to transform the rage and grief contained in that revelation into something that can undo the harms and traumas inflicted by our government. And my letters to you no longer feel like they contain the means by which to transform.
We started this project when you realized that death was just outside your door quietly knocking to let you know they were there. You heard the knock more clearly in the early morning hours. And maybe that is why I cherish these pre-dawn hours before almost all have awaken: I can hear you more clearly too. Your presence is never far. I see / feel / hear you as I look at the stars and sip my coffee. Even here in the middle of the big ol’ City I can see them through the fog.
This past holiday was the most difficult holiday I have experienced in my 45 years on this earth. I missed you so terribly much even though it has been over 25 years since we celebrated a Thanksgiving together. There have been more Thanksgivings apart than together, and the separation between us seems so immense. Yet in the last year of your life that distance shrunk to a small scratch that was healing even though we couldn’t physically be together for your living and your dying.
Part of my grief and rage which consumed me this past holiday was the revelation that our country, the one in which you believed so strongly that you even enlisted in the Reserves, was responsible for your death, and I was asked to celebrate and be thankful for The Great Myth of Its Creation. How could I celebrate when you are not here? What is there to be thankful for in a country that is still killing its people and whose Great Myth hides genocide and enslavement and war?
It has taken me days to disentangle myself from that all consuming grief and rage, and it has taken dear comrades and family to help me find my way back to the fullness of being. A state of being that does not simply quell the rage and grief but reminds me that rage and grief exist alongside and amongst joy and pleasure and care and love. That your living and dying exists alongside and amongst all my relations from the ocean to the stars to the cool morning wind to my family and my comrades and my neighbors.
As my being becomes more full once again I am noticing that these letters to you served a function of healing generational traumas between you and me. They aided in opening conversation between us so we could see each other as full beings complete with our complexities of emotions and baggage and traumas and delights. We mended the gaping wound, stitched it together one letter at a time. And this wound between us is almost healed. I feel it in my bones and in my blood.
In its healing, I am noticing a much deeper and larger wound, one that cannot be healed by letters between us (at least not at this time.) It is a wound so deep and traumatic, and I know you saw / see it too. You talked about it in the form of what the federal government and City of St. Paul did to the Black Rondo neighborhood and community when it split it in two to erect a highway in 1956. You were four at the time and living in poverty in the western suburbs. You had no clue of or connection to the highway being built, to the lives and families and community being destroyed by displacement for ease of white suburbanites in getting to their high paying jobs in the City’s Center.
You felt such obligation late in your life to repair the harm caused by your government’s action. I, too, feel this obligation, and it has compelled me my whole adult life. I cannot shirk my responsibilities, even in poverty, from what is done in my name on behalf of the state. This weight at times seems unbearable.
How can one hold such responsibility when it is the rich and powerful who are committing traumatic acts in one’s name?
The answer for me lies in the revelation that one cannot hold such responsibility. For if one holds that kind of responsibility, it will only perpetuate a cycle of harm and trauma for it contains the trauma within a single, individual cell / self. This trauma then replicates and infects all nearby. I witnessed this in myself as I tried to celebrate a holiday that means death and genocide.
Rather, healing this wound requires family and comrades and neighbors living and creating and being together and finding ways to stitch our wounds collectively. There is no single way to stitch, and I am realizing that these letters, our stitches, are requesting to be transformed into new thread.
This past November, I had the incredible fortune and honor to co-create alongside and amidst dear comrades Crystal Mason, Rupy C. Tut, Momos Cheeskos, Todd Berman, Nadïne LaFond, Juan Carlos Escobedo, Ash Tré Phillips, Keyssh, and Kapi’olani Lee experiences of belonging and inclusion and fully being, if even momentarily. It was delightful to play and dream and pause and scribble and reconstruct and cast while we recognized and let be the incredible shittiness and traumas and horrors of this existence on this earth. It felt and feels like we are stitching our wounds both individually and communally, and it gives me hope for greater healing.
I have also longed to write to you of these griefs and horrors, to let you know how deeply these revelations have rooted into my core. And yet each time I sat down to write you, my anxieties and stresses and fears soared. I could not write to you amongst and amidst my grief and rage because it was not yours / ours to heal. And I do not know how to write to you without the lens of our relations in all their complexities, including our still healing wound.
I am able to write you today because before I began I crafted an altar and cast a spell to help me (re)discover a path that leads towards collective liberation from capitalism and White Supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy and ableism and ageism and colonialism and imperialism and all oppression and tyranny. Its creation made space for me to finally address a letter to you. Contained within it are words from The Red Deal, Tao Te Ching, How We Get Free, Liber Null & Psychonaut, and Another Mother Tongue. Runes gifted to me by chosen family are also present as is the I Ching. I have representations of the elements of fire, water, plant, bone, metal, air, rock, medicine, and crystal. Your pocketwatch is at the center. There, too, is a print mom gave me which centers a photo of me and my siblings during Christmas, a photo of grandma playing piano, a photo of granny and grandpa and me at their Arizona home, and a Make Jason paper doll that reimagines our family from an art installation three years ago. New Foundations, a multi-racial, multi-gender Marxist cultural quarterly by and for youth from 1947, unites a photo of John and me from our wedding and a photo of me and some young artists as we head to an arts conference. I also placed my dream box gifted to me by my sibling Crystal on my altar for it holds tenderly seeds to all my dreams. It is a map of all my relations, and it contains healing necessary for my growth and development.
Sitting amongst and amidst it as I write to you this final letter provides the strength for me to stitch this final stitch. I know deep in my bones and in my blood that I can no longer continue writing you in this manner. It will no longer do that which I need it to do. Instead, I must see / witness / engage / converse with you in another way. One where you are amongst and amidst all my relations.
This altar and spell is a start. So too is sharing our story in new ways yet (re)discovered. So too is co-creating with comrades. So too is weaving our familial, ancestral ethnography / cosmology into how I introduce myself in time and space. So too are so many other things I cannot even imagine or dream.
And you will be there with me. Alongside and amidst. We’ll continue stitching this deep wound, which still is here and still seems so daunting, but we will not do it alone. We’ll join together with our family and comrades and neighbors to liberate our selves from the death of capitalism and White Supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy and ableism and ageism and colonialism and imperialism and all oppression and tyranny.
I love you so so so so fucking much, dad, and I see / feel / hear you here and now and in all that came before and in all that is possible.
In deepest reverie & camaraderie & healing & the deepest love possible,
Your Child & Your Namesake & Your’s Truly - Jason Michael Wyman
December 3, 2021
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It takes quite a bit outta me to write, edit, design, and publish these letters, and I still gotta pay rent & bills. So any financial support is greatly appreciated.
On Black Friday, one week before I would sit down and finally stitch this final stitch, I sat down to record a reminder to myself: it’s ok to take time and space to grieve. As we head into more holidays, I thought it might be some advice other’s might need to hear as well.