I have no photo portrait of this lady.  Her image, though, and that of her son, are together forever in my heart.  I’ll try to give you a print of her.  In black and white.  A Pieta. 

Think of an older mother in a long gingham dress, a body worn by work, but with a spirit quick and alert.  Alert to a son born to her twenty years ago, a son who to her has spoken never a word, but whose eyes follow her every move.  The two of them live in a small log house at the eastern edge of the Reservation, hidden from the school and the community centers by the silvery slender ‘Bam trees.

A window lets the southern sun shine on her boy and on his immaculate ironed white sheets and coverlets.

The arms of the bed embrace him.  In his spasms he is held safe.

Through the window you see the small garden planted up to the log wall of the house.  The mother is never out of earshot of her son.  The clothes lines hold billowing sheets drying; yes, and a dozen diapers.  It is 1944.  I am young and new.  People are fast teaching me how to be a priest. 

It’s First Friday.  I am on the roads to visit home-bound mothers and fathers, uncles and aunties and to bring them Holy Communion.

At the bed side on a small table covered with white are two lighted candles.  The Holy Water bottle is there, ready.  Momma is kneeling on the floor, her hand on the hand of her son.  She is soon to receive Jesus for herself, but also for him. 

The son is still, watching, listening.  As we pray there is a bubbling in his throat.  His body trembles as I lift the Host to his mother’s tongue.  Now he is still, while I say the final prayers and fold up my Holy Communion kit.  The mother has knelt the whole time.

I am ready to go, but she touches my hand.  er dr She goes back on her heels, humble, suppliant, her dress spread out around her.  “Father, please listen to me.  I want to ask you something.”  A quiet breeze touches the grass on the roof. The son is rigid.  His eyes are fixed. 

“Father, every month on First Friday you come to us.  Before you come I tell my son who you are, and I tell him who you are bringing.  He knows, Father.  He knows.” 

Her eyes are on me, as are his.  “Father, what do you think?  When you come the next time, could you bring a little piece for my little boy, too.  He knows, Father.  He knows, because I tell him, and he knows.”

I can be awfully dumb sometimes.  But not now.   Some people get to me.  I surely can’t be that dumb I not understand and respect the ways of a mother and not believe her, when she says of her son, “Father, he knows”.

I hear the grass again.   The breeze is stronger.  There’s a message in it.  I feel something.  When I feel something that strongly, I give in to it.  I don’t hesitate.   “He knows, Father.”  She whispered it. 

I said one word, “Yes!”, and the bed exploded.,  The sheets ballooned.  The boy’s face twisted.  His eyes welled.    Ecstasy.  I wish everyone could feel the joy of the Pieta that I saw, a mother bowing over her son, and he holding his mother.

“Koohkoum – Grandma –  I won’t wait a month.  I’ll be here tomorrow.  I’ll bring Jesus to you and to your boy tomorrow morning.”

Even the bed was dancing, and the breeze was a song..

These are the kinds of folks, Heroes and Heroines, who have entered and shaped my life.  A log house.  Small garden.  Long clothes lines,  Years of faithfulness, caring.  Waiting on the Lord.   The yearnings of mother and son fulfilled by His Coming.  It has been worth the wait.

Two months later, at the onset of flu, the son died.  I was there.  Tears from the mother, but joy that, “Jesus came to our little house, to see the two of us.”

Before Christmas she, too, died.

The house is no longer there.  But the footprint of Jesus is in that garden spot, I know.  It’s Sacred Land.  Others. too, will hear the breeze and know that He is there.

01/02/04
fr. stan

The names and stories of the men/women/youth that I knew are preserved in unedited form in the Oral History Collection, Institute of Indian Studies, University of South Dakota.

Newspaper columns, about the same people, are preserved at t he Center for Western Studies, Augustana College, Sioux Falls.