2013 35 Features Travel1 1

Acoma

A grief narrative by Teri Mccormick

There are places in our lives that stand as memorials to the things that happened there, and we return again and again in our thoughts if not in person to experience the thing we remember. For me, there is a place like that in New Mexico that stands on the top of a sandstone mesa soaring hundreds of feet above the high desert floor. Driving through the openness of New Mexico, you see Acoma long before you get there, and the startling blue skies framing the towering monoliths that rise to the tabletop of the mesa take your breath away.

I first came to Acoma on one of our annual visits to New Mexico that began 25 years ago. My parents had moved there and so our summer vacations became long road trips or airplane rides to the west, always starting or ending in Albuquerque. For years, we stayed at my parents’ home, but as the girls grew up, we began to rent homes for a few weeks at a time so we could spread out. One of those years, we went to Acoma to take my mother-in-law, who had joined us for a time in Albuquerque. Now, I visit Acoma in my head with my eyes closed.

The day we were there was a brilliant summer day, one of the 270 sunny days you can count on each year in New Mexico. We rode the distance from the visitors’ center to the village at the top of the mesa, known as Sky City, with only a few other visitors and our tour guide. The village is home to fewer than 50 tribal members who live in the rock homes built at the edge of the sheer bluffs. Walking the paths around the homes, we could see inside the small ancient structures, and smell food cooking. Family members sat in front of their homes selling food or jewelry or pottery and I had the impression that our group was an unwelcome but necessary fact. A sense of invading a place came and stayed with me as we moved along their private spaces. Left with that impression, I may never have returned. It was a place that was beautiful that could not be explored without taking something important from those who lived there. In fact, with one exception, I have never returned to Acoma in all the years since.

Except in my head with my eyes closed. And that is often.

Because what I saw on this brilliant day when we had the homes behind us and arrived at the edge of the village, was a stunningly spectacular sight all the way to the horizon. From there, I could imagine what the tour guide suggested about getting or sending word by smoke to other pueblos miles away when danger approached. In this clear brilliant light on this high desert landscape of spectacular proportions, I could honestly see for miles and miles. Even with no danger to report, I could not turn my eyes away.

There is where I stood until my family finally made me turn back. In those long silent moments, I only felt what I saw. There were no words, there was no language to my experience. It was only seeing this vast expanse of sky and rock and land and an emptiness that was filled up with what I had never seen before. The New Mexico sun warmed me, and the sounds of the desert swirled nearby: silence but not really silence. You might have been able to turn in every direction and see the same sky, the same landscape, the same filled-up emptiness, but I am sure I never turned. I hardly breathed. A few years later, my dad died and was buried in Santa Fe. His grave is at the top of a grassy hill with views of Santa Fe that realtors would die for. Pun intended. I miss him like I would miss my next breath if the air disappeared. But when I remember my loss, it is not of Santa Fe that I think. It is Acoma.

In those moments years ago when I stood there facing what God had made of emptiness, what daughters and sons have been seeing for millennia, I saw something that filled me up and undid me, too. Beyond words, it is where I go when I have the deepest grief or sadness. In my head, with my eyes closed, I do what I could not do that day. I howl into the emptiness. For what it feels like to have lost my father, I howl. For the heart-stopping fear-turned-reality that my brilliant sister is dying, I howl. I howl for losses that have come and those that await us. I join the chorus of grief prayer. Acoma is a memorial to the things that happened there. If only in my head. With my eyes closed.
- Teri Mccormick