{"id":706,"date":"2022-01-16T16:03:13","date_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/?p=706"},"modified":"2022-01-16T16:03:16","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:03:16","slug":"the-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"The Cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Throughout my post secondary years of school I made several trips to my reserve.  I never went straight to the band office but rather took many tours around to see the different houses and businesses.  I always had a blank canvas to imagine who my family was, houses they lived in and what my family name was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t remember how I discovered my birth mother\u2019s name was Diane Simpson.\u00a0 How strange to be a Simpson when I spoke with my mother\u2019s cousin and her last name was Crow.\u00a0 How cool would it be to have such an Indigenous name.\u00a0 Now that I am writing this, I will have to research how Simpson became a name on my reserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time I was passing by the reserve, I would drive through. One time I was there, after I had graduated, I was visiting with my husband at the time- Sandy.\u00a0 We stopped at one of the gift shops where he had decided to buy a hand-crafted leather vest.\u00a0 He mentioned to the clerk that I had an Indian Status card and didn\u2019t pay tax.\u00a0 I searched my wallet and found I didn\u2019t have my card with me.\u00a0 She asked what reserve I was from, and I said this one.\u00a0 She had a searching look in her eyes and asked me who I was.\u00a0 I said, \u201cI am Diane Simpson\u2019s daughter\u201d. Her jaw dropped and she said my mother had just left!\u00a0 My heart was racing and I asked where she lived.\u00a0 She brought me outside the door and pointed up the street and showed me which house was hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This is Diane’s house.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Immediately I drove up the street and stared at the house.\u00a0 This is impossible!\u00a0 I willed her to come outside but there was nothing.\u00a0 Beside her house was the cemetery which you had to drive up a hill to get to and then you could easily overlook her home.\u00a0 We stayed for quite a while and not sure of the exact length of time, but I can say for sure over an hour.\u00a0 We walked the cemetery and studied the names, date of births and deaths.\u00a0 This was the first time I felt a true connection to my reserve and birth family, trying to connect who my relatives were and where I fit in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I drove away I wondered what kind of conversations this may have stirred in the community as I declared who my mother was.\u00a0 Did it get dismissed so easily because everyone thought it impossible this visitor was Diane\u2019s child?\u00a0 More to come on this!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
My mother’s house was just to the right of this entrance into the cemetery.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As my children grew older, I took them to see Diane\u2019s house.\u00a0 We would spend time looking down from the cemetery and wondering who she was and what she looked like.\u00a0 Some fun memories happened in that cemetery. As you can imagine in the 1990s, my kids came to the realization that we could have been \u201cThe Simpson\u2019s\u201d!\u00a0 My son also learned how to drive in that cemetery, or rather learned how to pop the clutch in the Jeep and I learned how to run beside a Jeep and stall it.\u00a0 We actually spent time just hanging out there with a strange feeling of comfort and contentment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not a huge visitor of cemeteries but this one I always spent time in, walking and pondering.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s because I know it\u2019s my land, the place of my people that is so unknown and was so surreal being there knowing the history I was not a part of.\u00a0 It\u2019s very different knowing my adopted Mom and Dad are buried at Capital Memorial Gardens and that I don\u2019t need to visit there to ponder the unknown.\u00a0 I know the difference between having closure and not having closure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of you have messaged me with your thoughts on how I am feeling writing this blog.\u00a0 I am discovering so much about myself, my feelings, my \u201cunfinished\u201d business in my thoughts.\u00a0 Writing has actually pieced together a lot of missing blanks that were in my mind but now has so much more clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, miigwech <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout my post secondary years of school I made several trips to my reserve.  I never went straight to the band office but rather took many tours around to see the different houses and businesses.  I always had a blank canvas to imagine who my family was, houses they lived in and what my family Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-adoption-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chriswagg.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/img_6481.jpg?fit=1242%2C977&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}