From embalming to wrapping, from burning to vigils, from the sacred Shiva to the murky Bardo, humans create complex routines, rituals, and beliefs related to releasing a human-departed body to the elements and the spirit to the non-elemental. But how do we release ourselves when we are left behind?

When forced to sit in a father-less space of an instantly changed life, novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had this to say on what remains after those we love die:

I finally understand why people get tattoos of those they have lost. The need to proclaim not merely the loss but the love, the continuity. I am my father's daughter. It is an act of resistance and refusal: grief telling you it is over and your heart saying it is not; grief trying to shrink your love to the past and your heart saying it is present.

That is what the rituals give us, a door from loss into love and continuity. "I never got to wash my mother's body when she died..." mourns Joy Harjo (born May 9, 1951) a liminal poet who uses poetry to open the doors between lost and found. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee community, an indigenous tribe whose legacy in the United States mirrors the same brutal loss and unanswered questions of so many communities. Harjo was researching her family's history when she sidestepped into this beautiful, lyrical poem about her need to say goodbye to her mother.

I never got to wash
my mother's body when she died.

I return 
to take care of her
in memory.

That's how I make peace
when things are left undone.

"I return to take care of her in memory." Illustration by Dana Tiger.

"I step in to make my ritual... So that my children and grandchildren can move on." Illustration by Dana Tiger.

There is a physical conversation to be had with our dead loved ones. A kiss, a touch, a tattoo, an embrace and release. Where does her body go? It's what I think whenever I think of my mother dying. I'll never see her, breathe her air, feel her skin again. The loss of her body, and voice. That is where it hits. Harjo embraces this physical release delicately and courageously.

I go back
and open the door.
I step in
to make my ritual.
To do what should
have been done.
what needs to be fixed
so that my spirit can move on.

What remains in us, in mourning, is still connected to what's lost until we sever that connection. "The mother root is the deepest root of each of us," Harjo writes.

My mother kept the iron pot
given to her by her mother. 
whose mother said
it was given to her
by the U.S. government
on the Trail of Tears.

She grew flowers in it.

"I turn my faucet on and hold my hand under the water until it is warm." Illustration by Dana Tiger.

I read recently how the mother's cells remain in the child, existing up to twenty years after birth. And the mother's in the child. Beloved guests in the host. Physically connected. When I tried to explain this to my daughters, they could not fathom little bits of me bouncing around their blood but liked the idea of us being connected. I do not know how they conceptualise a cell, a spirit, or loss. But they do. Someday it will become clearer, someday they will stand in these things after I am gone. Harjo is right when she writes about the difference between goodbye and release.

I ask the angels,
whom she loved
and with whom
she spoke frequently, 
to take her home,
but wait,
not before I find
her favorite perfume.

"I pick up a bar of soap, the same soap she used yesterday to wash her face." Illustration by Dana Tiger.

"I find the white enamel pan she used to bathe us when we were babies." Illustration by Dana Tiger.

Saying goodbye is turning away as another departs. Releasing is the act of standing and watching them go, smelling the perfume, singing their song, "a moment of happiness wound through." Harjo's poem, the imagined washing ceremony of her mother's body, sitting with it, celebrating, truly seeing her body and spirit, is rooted in the idea that a spirit, once released, grows closer than ever. This beautiful poem is tenderly enhanced by a stunning, epic original watercolor "The Most Valuable Power" by Dana Tiger. Like Harjo, Tiger is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Washing My Mother's Body: A Ceremony for Grief is two mothers', daughters', and friends' stunning collaboration of deep respect for death as the companion to life.

"She has written notes for me to find when she is gone." Illustration by Dana Tiger.

"I ask the keepers of the journey to make sure her travel is safe and sure." Illustration by Dana Tiger.