The Bridge of Fire Project for Burning Man 2009

One year ago on this day, the most painful fire that I have ever witnessed consumed my son’s body. It took place at a beautiful cemetary in San Rafael at the base of Mt Tamalpias. A small group of Donovan’s family and friends made there way to a place overlooking the small valley and the building where the furnace was being prepared. We held a Native American Ceremony. A very powerful young man who had known Donovan came to offer his blessings and prayers. We had gathered many small items that we knew Donovan loved to offer to the fire. We brought his favorite foods and some cigarettes. After the ceremony Kandy and I cut off some of our hair and laid in the prayer bundle.

Then, along with Jeremy and two of Donovan’s best friend’s, we made our way down to a place that was not much more than a garage storage bulding that also housed the furnace. His body was there in a cardboard box. He was dressed in a suit that he wore in Washington DC when he did a year long internship for Senator Tom Daschle. It sounds so trite, but he looked so peaceful. He was a handsome young man. I remember when the coroner called me on the day he jumped, he commented on how he couldn’t understand why such a beautiful young man had to go like this. Anyway, Jeremy performed a special blessing over the body and gave Donovan’s spirit permission to move on without regret.  Each of us in turn, said our personal goodbyes. I placed a long lock of his hair that he cut off and given to me before he had gone off to Washington. When he gave it to me, I did not know why or what to do with it, so I just put in my medicine box. When I asked Jeremy about it, he told that it needed to go with him into the fire. I looked at his face, told him I loved him and wrapped from the back of his head to his chest. He looked so beautiful.

The time had come. There was not going to be a miracle. His body was no longer where his spirit lived. There were last looks and shared glances between all of us. At some point, I had asked John,  the funeral director if he would allow me to put the box in the fire, and he said it would be OK. We wheeled it over to the furnace, raised it up and they opened the door. When open, it had the appearance of a an altar and looked like a kiln inside. I took a couple of deep breaths, and slowly pushed him into the fire. I looked at John and nodded. He closed the door and locked it down. There was a red switch. He pushed it. I could hear the fire and that was it. Ashes to ashes.

Even now sometimes I question the reality of this thing I am going through, but all I have to do is remember this act. This thing I did to close the door on his physical existence on this planet. It was a good thing for me to do. I will always remember his face on that day. At peace and telling me that he was flying free with all the ancestors who had gone before.

I am now making plans to take his ashes to Oklahoma which is ancestral home. This was his request. Then his physical journey will be complete as I place his remains at the place where my Grandfather, Walker Bark, is buried. As the entire year has been, this will be a difficult time. I hope to travel there with my brother to find my Father, and meet with a one of Donovan’s uncles who will perform the ceremony according to the medicine ways. In this way, his ashes will return to the earth in a place where many of his ancestors have gone before him. He will be home and the circle complete.

I’m driving to work and that song comes on the radio and the rain is pounding against the windshield faster than it can be wiped away. Then there’s the pain in my brain and I feel myself sinking down into the darkness and my eyes open up like the clouds in the winter sky. The tears are like rivers that flow to a sea of grief….to the sea that swallowed Donovan. I see it again. It was only four seconds and I try to make a deal with god, but I’m not allowed to sit in on that game, and I remember pushing his lifeless body into the fire. I say goodbye again. Everytime someone says he is better off now, I want to scream…..and my eyes keep on raining. I shouldn’t be driving. How can I go to work? Is it always going to be this way. I need a friend today….someone to say it is all going to be OK and make me believe it. I drive here and there, but no one is home. So, I drive to a place I know and walk in the rain until I am soaked to the bone. I reach for my phone, but I know words will only make it rain harder. I know you are all out there, but I will still be alone after I hang up. I stand in the cold facing the heavens, trying to find the truth. I am not moonfire today. I am not even Dana. I am a broken little boy who has lost his way in the dark.

Then I realize how sick I have been and how I don’t want to go through that again. I realize that I have things to do and I have people depending on me. Even though I feel like I want to die sometimes, I need to live. I remember what a good friend said. I can’t figure out if the the rain is my tears or if my tears are the rain, and I realize it’s all the same, and that it is beautiful because spring is coming. My tears will help the flowers grow. My tears will wash my spirit and feed my soul. My tears will build the Bridge of Fire. Maybe then I will be able to let him go

Everything about the day was appropriate. It was cold and rainy. I had a virus from hell, so I felt worse than shit. We are broke, so we couldn’t go away and could barely afford to even leave town, but we drove over to the coast….over to Bodega Bay to find a place in a picture that showed the numbers on a marker on highway 1. This is an example of the things a person does after a son dies. You see, this was a place that we knew Donovan had been a week before he died just one year earlier. I had been dyslexic with the numbers, so it took us a while to match the picture with the reality. We also had some other pictures, but were only able to locate two of the places.

Then we got out and stood there wondering and asking the same old questions. At one point, I stood and looked over the edge of one of the shear, rocky cliffs and felt the wind push me back. I searched the raging high tide below for something….anything, but with no real expectations. I tried to see through his eyes. Is this where he got some kind of spiritual permission to go to the sea…..back to the womb of Creation? I cried and I screamed and I asked once again for the millionth time, “why?” There were no answers and no clues. I was sick. My chest was burning, my eyes hurt, and my head was exploding.

We drove up the coast until we got to the Russian River and then back tracked after deciding to get a drink somewhere. On the way back we stopped again at Coleman Valley Rd which was where one of the pictures had been taken. It was taken from a car and so we assumed that him and his friend had driven up this road and back down or maybe just turned around at this intersection. I walked out past the sign that said, “stay back” and looked over the edge again and looked out to the never ending sea. The sun was falling into the water rapidly, but there was no grand and beautiful opening in the clouds. So, it was just grey, cloudy darkness extinguishing this unhappy anniversary. I remembered that I had come to do a ceremony however small and rushed to get my medicine box and began to rifle through it haphazardly looking for the things I needed. Then, we walked down to small rock outcropping that was just barely a windbreak, and tried to light the fire…..and tried, and tried, and tried. Finally, Kandy retreated to the car to get a charcoal lit. While she was gone I arranged the burrito, the chocolate, and the cigarettes we had brought and cried some more. It was bitter cold by now and my chest was on fire. Kandy came back with the burning charcoal and I laid it on the small bits of paper and unlit matches. The fire began to burn after minor coaxing and we stood there both crying and I remember screaming one more time. I blew my whistle to the four directions while Kandy spoke prayers out loud. We put sage and cedar on the fire and the wind circled the rocks and disappeared in all directions. It was starting rain again by now, so that was it. One year to the day, and that was it. I thought to myself, “this was not good enough.”

I drug my exhausted body back to the car. My spirit was missing in action. We made our way back down the coast to The Tides, pulled in and found the bar. There was a basketball game on and on other guy who was obviously a local a couple of seats away from us. The world had not noticed a thing and was still moving in a forward direction. We sipped our drinks and I cried a little more. The drink warmed me and helped my headache, but it did not do anything for the aching in my heart.

Coming home, while Kandy drove, I made a few phone calls and found out that the father of a good friend had died earlier in the week. Kandy and I talked and we revisited some of the same words and thoughts that we had spoken so many times in the last year, but all I kept thinking was that it wasn’t enough and I don’t know when it will be enough.