Host: Angelica Lindsey-Ali

Angelica: [00:00:04] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host this week, Angelica Lindsey-Ali. You might know me as a host of some of our live events, or maybe you've heard my Mainstage story about traveling to Mecca for Hajj. If you haven't heard that, you can find it on themoth.org. 

Our story this week comes to us from Katy Laurence. Katy told this story at a Mainstage show in Anchorage, Alaska. The theme of the night was State of Affairs. Here's Katy, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

Katy: [00:00:38] My grandmother, my mom's mom, always points out ravens to me. She hears them calling and she says that it's her mom, my great grandmother, coming to visit her. Now, as a kid, I can't say that I paid much attention to this story or our family heritage. I was just like any other kid growing up in Anchorage. 

In grade school, my classmates and I had pen pals, and we would all cook up these wild and very not true stories [chuckles] about what it was like to grow up in Alaska, you know, the ones like raising wild wolves and mushing them to school 100 miles, and wrestling bears for their teeth. I'd sometimes wonder though, my mom was an Alaska kid, and it made me think if she was writing these stories and these letters, would some of her stories actually be true? I didn't really know.

My mom died when I was a year old. And without any memories of my own, I was just left searching for clues. I'd sometimes build little cabins in the snow, and I'd sit at my little snow table in my little snow kitchen and I'd ask her questions. More often though, I would just repeat things that other kids said to their moms since I didn't know what the real thing might be like. 

I was raised by my dad in a very loving home. But he and my grandmother never talked about my mom much. And it wasn't until I was 13 and cut my hair short for the first time that I realized, wow, there was a really stunned look on their faces. I noticed then that I was actually growing to resemble her. And I realized it might actually be painful for them to remember, be reminded or even talk about my mom. I didn't want to hurt them. So, from then on, any clues I was searching for, I searched for alone. 

Anytime I'd find a clue, an old photo album, a box of my mom's old clothes in the closet, I'd just get more frustrated. Frustrated that those dresses wouldn't fit me and that I'd never live up to this deified image of my mom and what little I knew about her. And I still grew up anyway. I met a boy. I fell in love. I had a family of my own. All those questions that I had, like about that box that was on the top shelf of the closet, same one that had the trunk, the box that held my mom's ashes, well, that was just another question I set aside. 

So, when my dad asked me one day if I wanted to be with him, because he said he was ready to finally lay my mom's ashes to rest, I wasn't really expecting it. I was too ashamed to admit to him how little I felt. I was 31 years old, which meant that that box had sat for 30 years on that shelf. And by then, I had set aside my longing for my mom. She was just this shadow I'd never know. But I did know my dad. I knew how much and how long it had taken for him to be ready for this.

I wanted to support him and my grandmother. So, it wasn't long after that I found myself flying into Juneau. It's where my mom grew up. We drove out to Auke Bay. It was near my mom's childhood home. And there was a boat there to meet us, and we climbed aboard. Almost immediately, my grandmother was giving very stern instructions to the boat captain about the particular route to the particular cove that she wanted to take. My dad was quiet. 

I had this creeping feeling of being an outsider. My dad and my grandmother had spent a lot of time in this place with my mom. It was beautiful though. The sun had started to part the usual clouds. And for those of you who haven't been to Juneau in the summer, sun is like a fairyland. [chuckles] There's mist hanging in the air, and the sun catches it and it sparkles. The water turns this deep turquoise. It's so lush, the light pouring through the trees, it's like sun pouring through a stained-glass window in a church. 

It was a short ride. When we reached the beach, we clambered onto the rocky shore. My dad turned to give pickup instructions to the boat captain before he cast off again. When we turned our backs to the water, my grandmother had already made a beeline for the trees beyond the beach. When we caught up with her, she was on her hands and knees. She was furiously ripping at the moss, pulling it away from the dirt underneath. And so, I dropped to my knees, and helped and pulled away the moss with my hands.

When we were done, my dad had opened his duffel and pulled out the box, the one from the shelf. It wasn't like an urn from the movies, all elegant. It was just a simple wood box. And inside was just a Visqueen bag, closed at the top with a metal clip. That bag was clear, which meant that I could immediately see that ashes weren't what I imagined. It’s like volcanic gray ash that would float effortlessly away on the wind. It was more like shells on a beach, broken pieces of black and white and gray and unmistakably bone. 

My grandmother did not hesitate. She stuck her bare hands into that bag and pulled out a handful of ash to spread in the open patch of dirt that she'd made. She spread wildflower seeds with it and was talking as she went. But I don't know what she said. Prayers, I think. But I wasn't really listening. I had stuck my hand in without thinking to help. This was the first, my only physical memory of my mother, and I was about to literally scatter it away. 

When we were done, the three of us scattering those ashes, we made our way back to the beach. We built a fire with a cord of wood and way too much lighter fluid. My great grandmother is Alaska Native. She's Tlingit. Even though so much of that is lost to my family now, my grandmother wanted to do things the way her family would have. Burn things to send to my mom. So, we put pictures on the fire, family photos, my kids mostly, and we burned the box too. We also burned letters, or at least my grandmother and my dad did.

I had tried so many times to write something, anything. But every time I tried, I just felt that same old discomfort and frustration that I did when I was a teenager or a kid. We were sitting there and my dad said, “Your mom would be so proud of you.” My dad has said that to me before, that he was proud. But I think this might have been the first time he ever said that about my mother. I was [sobs] so angry. He might be able to know that, know her, but I never would. 

When I was a kid, I overheard someone say once that it was better this way, lucky even, than not knowing. There's nothing to remember, there's nothing to miss. But I suddenly found myself scribbling down a letter filled with all my regrets, because three decades later, that loss, that hole that my mother had left behind, was still waiting for me. I wrote for what I wished and what I missed. 

And not just my mom. I wrote about not knowing my dad, who he would have been, this jovial person that people told me about. I think part of him must have died when she did. Not knowing my grandmother without this loss of her only daughter hanging over her and not knowing me. I folded that letter up, and I put it on the fire and I watched it burn away. 

The fire was just coals when the boat came back. We climbed aboard, headed back for shore and almost immediately, I could feel this shift. The clouds were rolling back in. That's Juneau. But somehow, my family was brighter. They were telling all these stories about this place and my mother, and probably as many as I'd ever heard in my whole childhood. 

When I got home, my husband asked me, “How was it?” I said, “It was okay.” I was surprised how much it hurt, but also how much it meant. It was still a few weeks before I realized I was hearing ravens and thinking about my mom. She would never have more than that as a voice to me and I would never have a memory of holding her more than her ashes in my hands. But now, we had a place. Thank you.

[applause]

Angelica: [00:11:05] That was Katy Laurence. Data analyst by day, improv comedian and writer by night, Katy Laurence lives with her husband and two sons in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition to The Moth Mainstage, Katy has performed as a host and storyteller with Arctic Entries, an Anchorage-based nonprofit storytelling show. She's currently writing a play about her mother, her grandmother and her family heritage. To see some photos of Katy and her family, head to our website, themoth.org/extras. 

We hope you'll honor Native American History Month by listening to more stories from and about Native people whose voices have been silenced for far too long. Look out for our playlist celebrating Indigenous stories, coming to themoth.org on Friday, November 27th. 

That's all for this week. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.

Julia: [00:12:07] Angelica Lindsey-Ali is a native of Detroit and a die-hard Afrofuturist. She lives with her husband and four children in Phoenix, Arizona, where she's also the host of The Moth StorySLAM.

Angelica: [00:12:18] Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.