Photo by Jerry Zhang, Book Cover from Sarah Crichton Books

Terry Tempest Williams | Erosion| Farrar, Straus and Giroux | October 2019 | 39 minutes (7,820 words)

"We are just lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence." —Virginia Woolf, The Waves

We had just celebrated my father's eighty-fifth birthday. Louis Gakumba and I were driving back up to Jackson Hole. My husband Brooke texted me, "I dear you. Pull over to the side of the road. Call me." I knew information technology was Dan. I had been thinking of him every bit I was mesmerized past the immense cumulus clouds building in the due west.

"Is Dan dead?"

"Yes."

"How?" But I already knew.

Dan had told me in April that he purchased the rope, that he was exhausted, that he couldn't bear it anymore, "information technology" being life, that he saw no cease or purpose to his suffering.

"I'm done, Ter."

And I believed he was telling the truth.

"I am proud of him," I said. Brooke was not prepared for my response; neither was I.

* * *

Dan Dixon Tempest hung himself on July 27, 2018, in the stairwell of his apartment building. He was found on his knees. The constabulary never notified our family.

A shut family friend, Darol Wagstaff, Dan's landlord and mentor, chosen my father.

"John, I'm and then sorry about Dan," he said.

"What'southward incorrect with Dan?" my father asked.

"He's gone."

"Gone where?"

"He hung himself this morning."

My begetter had left his card on Dan'due south door: "Nosotros are gathering at Callie's house. You are welcome. Dearest, John."

Dan never came.

"What is the culling?" Dan wrote in a notebook I constitute after his death.

He was a philosopher who wrote his principal'southward thesis on Wittgenstein and the eloquence of logic and language. He too laid pipe for the family business concern for decades, until he moved to California with his wife, took a job in logistics, and so was laid off later the economic downturn in 2008. He had a long history of depression, which led to isolation, which led to drinking to numb the pain, which led to opioids, which led to several runs of rehab. He took a chore at HawkWatch International, banding and releasing raptors in the wildlands of Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico. He loved the hawks and eagles, particularly the blood-red-tails. One day in the desert, we sat on our front porch and he told me it took 3 men to bring in a golden eagle, how magnificent they were, the range and reach of their vision, merely the carmine-tailed hawks were his favorite because they yielded. They seemed to empathise what was happening to them, that their lives were not in danger. The birds became his passion and his metaphor, but they weren't plenty.

Non long before his death, he texted me: "I'one thousand at my limit, sis — haven't slept in 3 weeks . . . no slumber . . . no slumber . . . I am eroding."

A few days passed.

". . . to understand something is to be liberated from it"

". . . and I tin't get pass'd bein' liberated . . . where did I go incorrect sister . . ."

My reply was this: "You oasis't gone wrong, Dan. Y'all are a vivid human being. You just need to proceed going and observe your artistic groove that will pull you to your destiny — This I believe."

He sent me an epitome of a bound mummy on a bound equus caballus.

'What is the alternative?' Dan wrote in a notebook I found afterwards his decease.

After, Dan sent me the talk by Malcolm Gladwell on David and Goliath. He texted this quote: "As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once put it: 'The reasonable human adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to suit the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable homo.'"

So this: "Y'all can't concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, 'What'southward gonna happen if it doesn't go correct.'"

"I'g winding down on the whole existence thing . . . I want to be free . . . stardust . . ."

I responded, "These are hard and lonely times. I don't have much hope and and then . . . In that location are these moments of beauty, a million people marching for justice, Dan. Stars in the night sky in the desert, your caring voice. I honey you."

". . . just make sure y'all get me in the air . . . been buried also long . . . xoxo"

"Dan, I want to know what you lot know, please write. This is what I listened to this morning in my own Nighttime Side of the Moon: On Being — The Soul in Depression."

"I have 2day . . . no signal anymore . . . pretty much need to meet things in these final days."

"I love you."

". . . just put me in the air . . . all I ask . . ."

"I hope you volition bury me first, Dear Heart. In the desert."

". . . won't be around then Sis . . ."

"I need you to be, Dan."

"Nosotros all practice — you, me, Hank."

". . . Ter . . . I'm non fuckin' around . . . mental affliction is taking me out."

"I believe you can become help, Dan. I hear you — and I am listening to what you are saying. There are medications that really can help, only y'all need a doctor and to take them on a schedule. Y'all know this—"

". . . evolve . . . I can deal with that."

"I know you suffer — God knows, yous are one of the strongest people I know, and about tender and smart. Yous are a beautiful soul, Dan."

". . . my brother said the same thing this afternoon . . ."

"Practice you believe usa?"

". . . si . . ."

"I believe the 3 of us are evolving together — each in our own ways. Did you listen to that podcast I sent you? It'southward powerful."

". . . agree . . . I just need a back door . . ."

"What practice y'all mean?"

". . . w/u and hank to deal w/information technology"

"Deal with what? Forgive me, I just need to empathise what y'all are saying — a back door?"

". . . come on . . . i'g not spelling it out."

". . . i don't want to be here anymore . . . pretty simple . . . you understand that . . . i promise anyhow."

"Dan, I trust you and honor who you are and where y'all are. And I will forever believe in your greatness of spirit, every bit you go along to face and embody the vitality and courage of staying with the struggle. I sympathize. But it breaks my eye. I think there are roads not all the same taken for yous, Dan. And medication could help y'all render to yourself. I volition just be honest, merely you take to want that — and I know you are tired. But life is life. And creativity is in y'all to express. This I believe."

". . . my legacy was beingness addicted . . . I could never shell it . . . but I was a sensitive/intelligent soul . . ."

"You still could beat it. That is not your legacy. Your disease has been office of your addiction, just that is not your legacy. You lot ARE a sensitive/intelligent soul. I love yous, Dan."

". . . ditto . . . just need to find some air for a spell . . . 30"

"Dan, would you desire to see Jonah Yellowman, a Navajo healer, this summer? He lives in Monument Valley, he'due south the spiritual adviser for Bears Ears."

". . . sure . . ."

A few weeks pass. He sends me the vocal "Simple Man."

". . . so much right and wrong in my life . . . bipolar"

"Thank you for the music, Dan. How are yous today?"

". . . i'one thousand ok. . . ."

". . . good day 2day . . ."

Weeks pass, no word, and and so, this:

"For the Love of God — Mind to this song, Ter"

"I dear yous. How are you?"

". . . I recall I accept victory over clay . . . finally . . ."

"What practise you mean?"

". . . i've done it all . . . nothing else to prove . . . open a new chapter . . . 30"

"Beautiful."

* * *

He sends me a link of Kim Kardashian addressing Congress and meeting with Trump.

". . . is this really where we're at . . . ? . . . fourth dimension to exit . . . i'm cracking the sky right now . . . luv ya . . ."

"I love you, my beautiful brother. Paint. Write. Dream. For me. Xxx T"

". . . tin y'all call me . . . it'due south existent important."

I called Dan. He told me he had bought a rope. That he was going to go out "gently.

I said I would never let him go, nor would I ever give up on the Globe.

Please write that addicts are practiced people, sister. And so he said something that haunts me even so: "Why can't you see information technology, Ter. We're fucked. You go on hoping things will change. I'g fucked. The planet is fucked. It'due south time to exit. Face it, sister. Information technology'due south time to let me go, time to allow it all go."

There was a long intermission. Neither of us spoke.

Let me go.

I said I would never let him get, nor would I ever requite up on the World.

After our call, he texted me: "Let go. Repeat: I bought the rope, Ter. I'yard going out gently. No guns. I would non do that to my brain. I volition non disappear in the desert. Y'all will non have to worry."

I texted him again:

"Please. I will never give up on you lot or your joy, Dan. You are alive, a testament to your strength and volition for Beauty fifty-fifty in suffering. I love you."

". . . I'm goin' offline tomorrow for my sanity . . . knock if need be."

A month later on, May 9, 2018:

". . . Ter . . . I'm suffering big time right now from deep loneliness . . . my question . . . ? . . . Practise I reach outward to institutions or go inward to art . . ."

"Both, my dear eye, each supports the other . . . Pigment, write, photograph. Seek the insight and help of an institution to steady your listen and so create out of what you are seeing, feeling, and learning once again. Please believe in your own cosmos born out of suffering and live. I love y'all, my beautiful brave brother."

No response.

June 7, 2018:

"Storm Family Name Meaning . . . English (Yorkshire): nickname for someone with a blustery temperament, from Middle English, Onetime French storm(due east) 'storm' (Latin tempestas 'weather,' 'season,' a derivative of tempus 'time')."

"Information technology'south in our name, Sister . . . the weather is changing . . ."

The last text I received from my blood brother was on June 8, the same day Anthony Bourdain hung himself.

". . . r u okay?"

I was out of range, traveling. I had been bitten a few days before past a brown recluse spider. Dad had told him. What I should have asked was "R u okay?" Simply I didn't. Instead, I wrote this:

"I am okay. Skin didn't get necrotic. Lucky. But it was scary. I encounter you have tried to call several times. We are in a remote identify where phone service is slight. Thanks. I love you. T"

No one heard from Dan subsequently June eight. He hung himself xl-ix days after. Who did he talk to? Where was he during those long summer days? Lonely — holed upwards in his flat? Downtown, mingling with the homeless? In the end, this was where he constitute his community, these were his peers with whom he institute comfort and was comfortable. Were there moments of insight and peace, having fabricated a decision to end his life, or was it just darkness? What do yous do with all that darkness? Our blood brother Hank asked, "Where does darkness go?" Why that day? That moment? Where were we? He had a family unit. We were non there. My brother died of isolation — knock if need be.

I never did.

"Doesn't the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?" David Sedaris wrote most his sister's death by suicide.

My brother hung himself.

They found him on his knees.

I am on my knees.

I cannot breathe.

When you lose a sibling, you lose yourself.

We were a tribe of four: three boys and a girl. Steve, Dan, and Hank. I was the oldest. Steve died from lymphoma in 2005. He was forty-7 years quondam. Dan died by his ain paw. He was fifty-6 years old. Hank and I are survivors. We know our DNA is a perfect match after existence tested to see if nosotros were a match for our brother Steve, who needed a bone marrow transplant in 2004. We were not a match for our brother and could non give him our cells. We struggled then. Nosotros are struggling now. But this death is different from the others. Decease by suicide has teeth, and when information technology bites, it will not let you loose.

A noose. My blood brother's suicide is a noose around my neck and it is tightening. The questions left will never be answered.

Grief is a physical landscape where no place feels safe. Information technology is a state of being where sorrow holds the eyes steady. I stare. I stare out the window. Hours pass without moving. I stare at people who talk to me and hear cypher they say. I stare at called-for candles. I stare at the bounding main. I stare into darkness unable to sleep. And when I do slumber, it offers the comfort of forgetting until I wake upward and hurting is there to greet me. The next 24-hour interval, flares of acrimony erupt unexpectedly. When I am able to role out of necessity, showing upwardly to piece of work, going to the grocery shop, I get ambushed: a piece of music, a judgement, a memory, a person. The tears stream down my cheeks. No one can assistance me. Grief is my brother, my sibling. When I embrace grief, I am embracing him. This is how I feel him nigh. I ache. My heart hurts. We loved each other. Grief is my companion now. Anybody and everything else is a distraction. Sometimes appreciated. Sometimes resented. People don't know what to say. I want them to say something. Alone in an empty parking lot, I scribbled a note on a piece of paper and pinned it on my jacket that said, "My brother committed suicide — Please talk to me." I walked in circles for more than an hour, but there was nobody in that location. I didn't really desire to talk. I needed someone to notice what couldn't exist seen; I wanted another take chances at loving Dan better.

Grief is a concrete landscape where no identify feels safe.

In my individual moments I believed I could help save a piece of land or save a species, a prairie dog or grizzly bear, but now I know I couldn't fifty-fifty salvage my blood brother. Grief burns through the bullshit. Death by suicide. Dan warned me. I chose not to see information technology, I chose denial instead of activity. I heard his words, but I failed to hear the pain. In the terminate, it'south rarely the large gestures that count, it's the pocket-sized ones. I knew my blood brother was suffering. I knew he was in pain. I knew he was alone. I could accept knocked on his door and held him.

But I didn't. I just kept living my life every bit though everything was fine.

That's one side of the story. Hither's the other side. Dan was an alcoholic, an addict. He lied. He lied for decades. He told me stories in which, against all odds, he was always the hero, the strong one, the 1 who fought for justice, the one who watched, the one who outsmarted anybody and survived. He told me these stories and then many times, I believed him. A mythology grew around him, part cowboy with ii-toned boots worn out through hard living, part Seneca the wise, vivid 1, steeped in philosophical puzzles and truths. The six-foot- iii armed outlaw and sage. On a bye, he could outwork anyone in the trenches with his strength and stamina. He read and understood the texts of Nietzsche and Husserl and Heidegger and Wittgenstein equally thoughtfully as whatever scholar I knew, because he had lived the questions of what it ways to be human and embody existential angst. I loved our conversations for all he saw that I missed. He painted wild nature and his own inner nature in assuming colors and strokes. He lived in a ruthless duality like the black-and-white pastel that hangs in my study. And in moments of levity, we laughed, we laughed and gossiped and teased each other. He told me any story he knew would lure me in, and it did. I believed he was sober. I believed he was no longer using. I believed the cherry rash on his body was bed bugs, not scabies. When he asked for money, I gave it to him. And when things got bad, when he was barely basic from not eating, when he was on the streets of Salt Lake City or passed out in a motel room drunk from apricot brandy or beer, I was there to rescue him. I was always there by his side, both of us with our cowboy boots kicking upward the dirt in the big moments between life and death, but rarely was I there in the pocket-size ones, the everyday moments of darkness and depression that he bore alone.

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As a member of our family unit, he was our visual reminder of pain (or was it disturbance?), peculiarly our ain; sometimes we tolerated him, often nosotros feared him, and when he was non present, nosotros missed him because he could be so charming and cute. His grin would intermission my will to exist tough. His perceptions were astute. He was my shadow, my underground suffering, my loving blood brother who as an adult was never truly known by anyone only his addictions.

My begetter, my brother Hank and I, uncles, aunts, and cousins were at that place, friends, too, until nosotros weren't. Until nosotros were tired of beingness used, driveling, played, and manipulated, until we knew in our gut, specially through dear and anguish, that nothing would change until Dan decided to accept the next step. At that place were then many next steps so many steps astern. Please write that addicts are good people. Alcoholism is a disease. Mental affliction is exactly that, an illness. But often we don't see it that style. Nosotros run across only our loved 1'due south bad behavior, their actions that wounded and betrayed us. Failing to acknowledge the severity of their afflictions, we see what appears every bit a lack of discipline and resolve as flaws and weaknesses. Information technology is a violent cycle, where the rats win and scurry through what footling property they accept left, salve the skulls and Milagros and crucifixes that hang on their white walls. Rehab started looking similar an institutional scam to milk codependent families of their savings. On bad days, it is easy to call back this. But through it all, my beloved brother Dan suffered valiantly, privately, for decades, believing at that place must be a reason he was nonetheless alive in the midst of his demons; he was amid those as well sensitive for the world, until he started losing his mind. Nosotros were not and so dissimilar. When we looked at each other, nosotros both would smiling, saying we had the same eyes, grayness-blue, sometimes greenish, and we do or nosotros did — my fingers stop on the keyboard — Dan's eyes turned inward. My eyes turn outward. Maybe my addiction is optimism instead of seeing what is true and real, that simply like united states, the Earth is engaged in its own evolutionary fate. Nosotros have to let go of what we desire. I don't want to let get. I wanted my brother live, even if he was suffering. My brother is dead. They constitute him on his knees. I am so proud of him. He finally did what he said he would exercise — my beautiful brother chose to end his suffering by one of the options bachelor to him. I could have knocked on his door. He could have opened it and we could take cried together.

Stay with me.

On the nighttime my brother Hank and I drove to the office of the medical examiner to identify Dan'due south body, the blood moon of the lunar eclipse was hanging low on the eastern horizon, cherry-orange slowly rising with the high-pitched barking of dogs. Nosotros rang the doorbell in the back of the building. A technician who worked the night shift opened the door. We told him nosotros wanted to see our brother. It wasn't possible, he said. Nosotros pleaded. Nosotros told him the constabulary never notified our family, that we found out from a friend who was Dan's landlord. Nosotros needed to come across him. We needed to see that he was dead.

The technician said he was so lamentable, only he could non do that. He said we could talk to the medical examiner. He called him and handed us his phone as we stood outside.

I heard his words, but I failed to hear the pain.

The medical examiner said, "Yeah, we have a trunk with the name Dan Tempest. Yep, he committed suicide in the morning time effectually nine o'clock, and yeah, he died from asphyxiation." For the next 15 minutes, the doctor took us through the procedure, how he would have passed out after two minutes, how the oxygen supply would take been shut off to the brain and he would take died. Our brother'due south brain, his brilliant encephalon, his gift and his nemesis.

"It'southward a relatively painless death," the doctor said. "I am sorry about your brother. By law, we cannot let you meet him until his body has been released and accepted by a mortuary." He paused. "That should exist tomorrow."

* * *

I am eroding — Dan said to me.

I am eroding — I say to him now.

Fire. I come across the mountain called-for. I see the preternatural glow at sunset and sunrise. In the American West, summer is now the flavour of smoke and flames. Smoke is choking usa, clouding our vision. Cipher is sharp-edged anymore or clearly defined. The world is a haze, out of focus, blurred.

My middle is burning. A person commits suicide in America every thirteen minutes.

Virtually don't leave notes. The human action itself is the bulletin. What is happening to us? My brother told me I was in denial. We are committing suicide on this planet. Simply isn't promise a moral obligation? What are we hoping for? What practice I refuse to see? To sorrow in the suffering of the earth together may be what we demand to embrace now, something across hope, deeper than hope, which is to award our grief of a changing world. I refused non simply to see the pain behind my brother's words, but to feel it. I was in that location with the large gestures, just I failed with the small ones. Repeating images. A knock on his door. A loving cup of coffee shared. I could take cleaned his flat.

Perhaps my addiction is optimism instead of seeing what is true and existent, that just like u.s.a., the Earth is engaged in its ain evolutionary fate.

Rather than anchoring our hope beyond the struggle, always projecting ahead, perchance locating joy within the struggle through our full presence can be our essential gesture at this moment in time. To feel the pain of at present and non look abroad. To deed not with the hope of moving forrad, ever forward, but to see the wisdom of stepping sideways every bit we create a different space, a more than conscious infinite in the management of pause, where we tin can breathe and gather ourselves so we tin gather others around us and create a customs of care, even inside our own families, specially our own families.

In my home country of Utah, grief is a country of mind. Our public wellness and the health of the planet are being undermined. In that location is no more room for denial. Denial erodes truth. Our actions and inactions are killing the Earth'due south natural systems, of which we are a function. Suicide. Nosotros are creating unnatural histories, and they all take a similar plot. My blood brother took his life and left united states of america behind, death by his own hand. I stare at my hands.

What does it hateful to pray?

My brother is dead. Say information technology once more. He hung himself. Say it over again. He killed himself. Say information technology once more, finally, my brother committed suicide, no, that is politically wrong, we now say "expiry by suicide." I empathise. That discussion: suicide. A beloved bequeaths their hurting to yous. Dan left no suicide note, but his rock-common cold, emaciated body was its own narrative, with the signature of red abrasions written around his neck. In that location is no stigma, simply sorrow for what is lost.

* * *

On July 18, 1992, Dan left me a note subsequently staying at our dwelling. Information technology was a simple letter with 2 questions:

Terry,

Who is going to ride your wild horses afterwards yous are gone?

Who is going to drown in your deep blue ocean?

I honey you,

Ddt

I have kept this note to a higher place my desk always since.

Later Dan's death, I found a photograph he sent me of a iii-story redbrick edifice with a white equus caballus looking out- side the middle window, closed. Beneath the photograph he typed "William Cooper." I idea that was the proper name of the photographer, merely in farther enquiry I found Cooper to be an American conspiracy theorist and the author of the book Behold a Pale Horse, published in 1991. I am certain Dan read information technology. Some call it "a militia manifesto." Dan'south uniform was desert fatigues, human knee-loftier gaiters, and combat boots, wearing a black sweater complete with a Blackwater insignia. With his black Ray-Ban aviator spectacles, he could look formidable. He was well armed, every bit is most of my family. The volume is almost how the The states government has betrayed its people, how the American Dream is a lie, and why the "Shadow Authorities" must exist taken down. William Cooper, who served in the navy, was said to have had military intelligence clearance, and had a large following. He besides believed in extraterrestrial aliens every bit a malevolent forcefulness on the planet, that John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he was most to reveal what the American war machine knew, and that aliens were among u.s.a.. Dan felt alien. In 1998, there was an arrest warrant on William Cooper for tax evasion. On Nov, v, 2001, Cooper was "murdered" in a shooting exchange with Arizona country troopers, just enhancing his cult condition.

There is then much nigh my brother I did not know. He had allegiances to the militia.

Sometimes, I worried what Dan might do. Sometimes, we were afraid of him.

* * *

My brother the philosopher, the militarist whisperer who caught and banded birds of casualty and released them to the winds; my brother who hung steel and dug ditches every bit a workingman paid hourly wages; my blood brother, "too sensitive among wolves," chose to take his own life. What he didn't realize is that he took mine with him. He took our father's life, too. And our youngest brother, Hank, the strongest of us all, the ane who never fell for Dan's manipulations equally I did. He just kept asking Dan what he loved.

Our family knows death. All families do. But suicide buries one beneath an barrage of questions. The morning we were about to accept a minor family unit memorial, my father said to me over breakfast, "Subsequently Diane died, I read every volume I could find to answer why, I must accept read a dozen or more, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross'southward Stages of Grief, all of those. And then, one day, I stopped reading them. I realized for myself the answer is — there is no answer. You just have to deal with it."

* * *

The bouquet of sunflowers fell off the mantel onto the floor. I awoke to sunflower petals strewn across the carpet. I picked them upward, one by i, and placed them in a pouch with 2 grouse feathers from Brooke and an owl plumage that barbarous from the heaven, snatched before information technology touched the basis. A souvenir from Louis. I took the reddish-tailed militarist feather resting on our bookshelf, given to me by Dan.

I arrived in Salt Lake City from Jackson, Wyoming, in a daze. Hank would meet me at the mortuary at 8:thirty a.1000. On my way, I called my father. He was not doing well.

Our family knows death. All families exercise. But suicide buries one beneath an avalanche of questions.

Hank greets me at Sunset Backyard. Nosotros hold each other tight, and then walk into the funeral home that nosotros know too well. We sit in the foyer and say little. The funeral manager welcomes us and tells usa the cremation will begin at nine o'clock and will accept roughly six hours to completion. You are welcome to leave and come back when we phone call you to pick upwardly the remains.

"We volition stay," Hank says. I wait at him. He is resolute.

We inquire to see Dan's torso. We tell the funeral director we would like to spend some individual time with Dan. He tells u.s. that would be hard as he is covered in plastic. We inquire to have the plastic removed. In that location is a long pause. We say nosotros want to affect his trunk before he enters the crematorium. The funeral director says he will run into what he can exercise. He returns and says it will take some time to remove the plastic. We say nosotros take time. The funeral managing director disappears.

Later on twenty minutes, we are taken into the back of the mortuary, where cremations occur. It is articulate to us that this expanse is not meant for the public or for families. The door is opened for us and nosotros run into Dan's torso draped in a white sheet. His shoulders are bare and his easily are folded one over the other above the sheet. We stand on either side of Dan'southward body, his beautiful long body. We are left alone with our brother.

Dan's face is beautiful. I expect his optics to open. His skin is translucent and a deep peace has settled over his trunk. There is the slightest smile on his face, non forced or stock-still by morticians. His body has been done, that is all. We see him clean and pure.

I pull out my pouch. Hank and I each accept a grouse feather and identify one east and ane west beneath his hands, his cute easily that we could finally touch and hold — surprisingly feminine hands in spite of a lifetime of digging. I hear him say, "I take finally mastered clay."

Other phrases render to me:

"Requite me the heaven, I've been cached too long."

"I have the rope, Ter. I am done."

He is done. We are undone. Into his resting hands we place feathers: the owl feather in his left hand, the red-tailed hawk plume in his right, the one bird of casualty that yields.

Hank and I, without words, intuitively place the sunflower petals on his eye laid blank . . . a pile of many petals to describe out the darkness from his troubled heart into low-cal;  Hank places i petal on his throat, where a broad red line circling around his neck reveals his option, and I identify two yellow petals on his forehead, i vertical and one horizontal, making a sunflower cross. In that moment, I heard Dan's vocalism equally clear equally the day, "Sunflowers, Ter, do you get it? Don't yous go it?" I paused, and then outburst out laughing. Yes, I got it — the Sunflower Clan! I had forgotten. I had forgotten the dazzler of a late summertime walk we made together through a radiant field of sunflowers, the last time Dan was at our habitation. Brooke and Dan and I were on an afternoon stroll, Dan noting how all the sunflowers were facing the light. Nosotros fabricated vows as self-appointed members of the Sunflower Clan to take care of i another and remind each other to follow the light in times of despair.

"Can I love myself enough to alter?" Dan asked as nosotros walked waist loftier in the yellow-petaled field. "Tin I, sis?"

I saw Dan'south pick as an deed of self-dearest, a quick modify of form from body to spirit.

Could his suicide have been an act of courage, carried out past his own hands? His beautiful hands. His want, finally, for a quick transformation of his burdened soul after decades of suffering. Maybe that'south why the get-go thought out of my oral fissure on hearing he was expressionless was 1 of support.

I return to his body, cold. There is no romance here, only the brutality of truth. My brothers are before me. Count them. Hank is alive, Dan is dead. Steve is dead. I am the eldest, why was it not me?

I saw Dan's choice every bit an act of cocky-love, a quick modify of grade from torso to spirit.

Hank and I stood on either side of Dan'southward body, at present placed inside the blue cardboard box he would be burned in. Nosotros said our prayers to each other on Dan'south behalf. And and then, if I am honest, I felt Dan's impatience, eagerness, "Let'southward go—"

A man in a black suit from the mortuary entered and asked if we wanted more fourth dimension. Nosotros said we were ready. The human thought we meant that we were set up to go.

Hank told him, no, that nosotros would be staying through the entire process.

"Are y'all sure?" he asked.

Hank said yes. By his side, I was following Hank'south lead.

And so the human in the black accommodate pulled the 2 doors open that revealed the cremation chamber.

The chamber was computerized. He prepare the dials to heat the furnace. Hank and I watched the neon numbers rise from 400 degrees Fahrenheit to 1100 degrees. It was hot enough; he then pushed a button and the sleeping accommodation door opened. Inside, we witnessed the flames, fueled by natural gas and sounding like rocket boosters. The homo nodded that now was the fourth dimension. Hank and I lifted the box holding our brother's trunk into the flames.

The bedchamber door came down.

The man in the black suit closed the two white doors and left. The roar of the furnace audible.

Hank and I sat on a dear seat against the wall. It was covered in cherry-red fabric with gold dragonflies. Nil else in the room was comforting. It was a room of discard and storage: filing cabinets, vases, plastic flowers, cardboard boxes, urns decorated with flags or doves or sunsets. A small desk with a figurer on information technology. A few devious chairs with overhead lights.

Clearly this was not a space intended for the contemplation of loved ones.

I got up and turned the lights off. Information technology suddenly became very dark. Hank, forever the wry one, said, "Nice atmosphere, Ter."

Another man in a black suit, an acquaintance from loftier school, came to check on us and asked if nosotros might not exist more than comfortable sitting in the antechamber. Hank and I said we were fine, that we would wait.

"It may take up to six hours," he said.

"We're cool," Hank said.

I smiled.

Hank and I lifted the box belongings our brother'southward body into the flames.

"Is in that location anything you lot need?"

"May we light a candle?" I asked.

His mouth moved sideways. "Let me cheque," and then he left.

Hank and I looked around the room. We spotted two candles on the shelves. And remarked at how uninspiring the art was, including a print of a misshapen girl in a pinafore holding a disgruntled cat. Then at that place was the one with a garish sunrise whose brilliant orange rays appeared to be spiking through a wood of lime-light-green trees. Our favorite, nosotros concluded, was the tipped-over milk tin in a garden of gladiolas.

My friend from high school returned with his skillful solemn demeanor and said, "I'1000 sorry, Terry, no candles tin can be lit as it is confronting the fire code."

"Of course," I said. And so we all outburst out laughing.

* * *

Time passed, 2 hours, then three; Lyn Dalebont, a dear friend close to Dan, came to run across us and the three of united states shared stories equally we sabbatum on the floor together. An astrologer, she read Dan's expiry chart for us. He was born on a lunar eclipse and he went out on a lunar eclipse.

"One for the record books," she said, "with all of Mars's free energy behind it."

On the night Hank and I went to the medical examiner'southward office to identify Dan'south body, I recalled over again how we held each other's hands as the blood moon rose above the Wasatch Mountains with caged dogs howling behind us.

"He was a warrior," she said.

* * *

I flashed back to seeing Dan's body for the starting time time subsequently his decease and thinking to myself how noble he looked. That was the word that came to me. Hank and I could non believe this was our brother. Dan was dead. This was true. The disbelief began to evaporate equally I stroked his forehead. In life, he looked like our male parent. In expiry, he resembled our mother. Hank and I saturday downward on the brocade couch in silence. Dan's peace helped us gather our composure, and we believed seeing Dan's torso would assist soothe our begetter'due south heart. Nosotros left the room, closed the door behind united states of america, and institute Dad in one of the mortuary waiting rooms, having finished signing the terminal documents, including Dan's death document.

We told him we thought it would exist adept for him to see Dan's body, that he looked peaceful, and it would go far real. He hesitantly agreed. We descended the steep steps with Hank and me on either side of him, and then we entered the dimly lit room.

With our male parent between us, we put our arms around him as he faced Dan'south still body. "I can't see him," he said. Shattered, he mourned his son, another son he had at present outlived. And then, his eyes were finally able to focus. "He looks similar a noble warrior who could have belonged to any fourth dimension."

His hair was combed back, long curls touched his shoulder. His beard was brownish with grey streaks. He was thin, too sparse, his high cheekbones accentuated his chiseled face.

"He looks like Diane," our begetter said. "Everyone always said he looked similar me."

We saturday on the couch across from Dan for some time. And and then, Dad stood up abruptly.

As nosotros left, he put his hand on Dan's shoulder. "Thank you, Dan."

The door opened. I jumped, startled. The man in the black adapt entered over again. "You may want to leave now — I am about to shift the bones."

"We are staying," Hank said. "I made a vow to my brother."

The human in the black suit then introduced himself. His proper noun was Brian Raabe. We shook hands. He pulled the white doors open. The heat from the retort seared our faces. Mr. Raabe took off his jacket and folded information technology neatly and placed information technology on the back of a chair. He and so put on a pair of long grey welding gloves. Nosotros stood behind him equally the chamber door to the crematorium was drawn up.

In life, he looked similar our begetter. In death, he resembled our mother.

Dan's body was called-for. Our brother'south rib muzzle had become white newspaper prayer flags flapping within the flames. His arms looked similar wings, and in that moment Dan was Icarus, kin to the eagles he loved and released in Utah's wilderness.

Nosotros watched Mr. Raabe rake Dan'south bones with the grace of a Zen master, in meditative motion like a dance with the expressionless. His body was being disassembled, spread across the floor of the gray brick chamber. Hank and I were mesmerized witnessing the beauty Dan was becoming, how the process was vaporizing a human body from flesh to spirit.

And then, afterward the terminal rearrangement of bones, Mr. Raabe stepped back with his rake, assessed the state of affairs, and pushed the button one time again as the door to the bedchamber closed. Mr. Raabe took off his gloves and placed his rake to the side. We walked back into the depression-lit room every bit he shut the white doors. Nosotros thanked him. He nodded his head as we resumed our place on the honey seat of dragonflies.

Our friend who stood with usa said she felt blessed to accept witnessed what we had, every bit she had not been present at her male parent'southward cremation, unaware information technology was an pick. She used the word "healing," although I am not sure what I heard, equally the moment had transcended anything I could rationally encompass.

Hank and I sat in silence for another stretch of time; an- other 60 minutes or 2 passed and Mr. Raabe returned, this time inviting us to lookout him gather the bones before he ground them into ash.

The doors opened, the chamber door rose, and Dan was gone. The bedroom was empty. I was shocked by the void that merely hours before had held his physical body. Mr. Raabe put the welding gloves back on and began raking Dan'south remains rhythmically into stainless steel trays.

Hank and I watched as our brother's bones were swept into view, now recognizable as parts of the homo anatomy: the brawl of a broken femur, finger bones, ulna, radius, rib fragments, a shard here and there, a glimpse of skull, his jaw, and many vertebrae, all being lovingly raked into the trays through the deliberateness and artistry of Mr. Raabe's care. With the larger fragments now gathered in ii trays, he took out a fine brush and swept the dust and smaller particles of Dan into another smaller tray with such tenderness, we stood in awe of the reverence and respect this stranger was showing our blood brother. This was a holy act, a ritual performed with nifty dignity, normally unseen and unacknowledged by anyone.

Our brother'south rib cage had become white paper prayer flags flapping inside the flames.

We followed Mr. Raabe into a stark room where he would separate the basic further earlier they would be ground into ash. He excused himself and left Hank and me alone with our brother's cremains.

Hank and I stood before trays of white bone fragments.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"Probably the same thing you are thinking," Hank replied. "Are they coyote, rabbit, or raven?" he said, smile.

"How many times accept nosotros come across like piles of sun-bleached basic in the desert?" I asked.

We wanted to touch them, but instead placed our hands just close plenty to feel the heat emanating from them. The remaining energy of our brother's life was being transferred into the palms of our hands.

* * *

There is no bureaucracy in death.

. . . no hierarchy of lives. Information technology is this bureaucracy that allows them to be inferiorized, stigmatized, and brutalized while other lives are privileged . . .

Nosotros are prisoners of an ideology that prevents the states from seeing the world as it is.

Nosotros are captives of a view of things that gives them a imitation appearance of self-prove.

Our chore is to change the world — no — our job is to change our view of the world.

There is no hierarchy in death, there are only bones.

* * *

Mr. Raabe returned. We did not speak. Nosotros simply watched him meticulously separate the bones with long narrow tweezers. He looked for metal and institute some in Dan's teeth. With special pliers, he pulled out fillings and placed them in a box with other fillings from the dead to be recycled, with proceeds going to the local children's hospital. Bone fragments were so separated into what looked similar pieces of coral; smaller pieces resembled shells; and then Mr. Raabe took an fifty-fifty finer paintbrush and swept the last particles of Dan into what looked like a small-scale ripple of sand found on the periphery of Pacific Coast beaches. He brushed the bone grit into a metallic container, followed by the sorted os fragments.

He turned to us and quietly asked if we were comfortable watching him grind the bones. Information technology would take roughly fifty seconds. We said yes. He turned on the switch like a morning blender, and we listened to the bass notes of our brother go the tune of ash.

And then, it was silent.

"Would y'all like to feel the last rut from your brother's life?" Mr. Raabe asked.

Hank and I held Dan in our hands for the last fourth dimension.

There is no hierarchy in death, there are only bones.

Dan's ashes would be placed into a simple black container that Hank could put in his haversack and comport into Utah's West Desert, where Dan banded and released aureate eagles to their vast terrain of sky. Mr. Raabe took the container, opened it, and poured the warm ashes within. Nosotros inhaled our brother. The box was closed. Mr. Raabe handed Dan'southward cremains to Hank.

We thanked Mr. Raabe for the grace of his work and for taking care of our brother. Nosotros experienced information technology as a sacred rite.

"It is my privilege and my calling," he said. "I know that I am the last person to bear upon the body of an individual who was loved. I take that very seriously." He paused. "Give thanks y'all for witnessing what I do."

Mr. Raabe walked Hank and me out to the foyer of the mortuary. Everyone had gone home.

Nosotros shook hands over again.

"One more thing," he said. "It's been my feel that when y'all scatter Dan'due south ashes, there is usually a sign that lets yous know when y'all have institute the right place — the shape of a deject, the call of a bird, some sign in nature."

'How many times accept nosotros come across similar piles of sunday-bleached bones in the desert?' I asked.

Hank told him that he planned on taking Dan'southward ashes into the Cedar Mountains westward of Salt Lake Urban center.

"A beautiful, rugged place," Hank said.

Mr. Raabe smiled. "My family name is German. When translated into English, Raabe means 'raven.' I desire yous both to know I felt your brother's essence. I had a stiff feeling nosotros would take liked each other."

* * *

Nosotros carried Dan's remains to our father's business firm. We walked within and establish John (equally Hank calls him) sitting at his desk waiting for us. We sat down and told him this story.

* * *

Dan's ashes weighed 8 pounds vii ounces, the same weight equally when he was born.

It is as well the weight of a gallon of water one carries in the desert.

* * *

Two days later, Hank put Dan'southward ashes into his haversack and headed toward the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Expanse, several mountain ranges due west of Salt Lake City in Utah's Neat Basin. Hank hiked for four hours directly up a particular peak that both he and our begetter knew, and that Dan inhabited during the winter months when his piece of work entailed taking deer carcasses out to the Westward Desert to lure gold eagles downwardly to the foothills for yearly population counts.

Hank did, in fact, recognize a sign, a stone height in the shape of an hawkeye head very near the tiptop. He knelt down on the pale steep ground where a flat spot emerged next to a bare-boned tree sculpted past the wind into the shape of a cross. Hank released the white ashes of Dan'due south body to the globe and sky, acknowledged by a circling hawk in a higher place that he could hear but not run across — one body yielding to another.

***

Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author ofThe Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks;Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place;Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and When Women Were Birds, among other books. Her work is widely taught and anthologized around the earth. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently the Author-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She and her married man Brooke Williams divide their fourth dimension between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Castle Valley, Utah.

Excerpted from Erosion: Essays of Undoing past Terry Tempest Williams. Published by Sarah Crichton Books an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux october eighth 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Terry Tempest Williams. All rights reserved.

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