Orphans, widows & unspeakable things

If you have no living parents, you are an orphan.

If you lose a spouse, you are a widow or a widower.

So what the heck am I?

I’m an orphan now, and that’s okay. We should all expect to lose our parents.

Having been conceived out of wedlock, I am also technically a b—ard. No, I’m not a bard, but this newspaper has standards for acceptable language, and I’m not going to break them.

For the last three years I have also been something that English has no word for: a parent who once had a child, but now has none.

If you lose any child, you may be called a “bereaved parent.” That is an awkward phrase and not specific enough to denote that no matter the number of children, none are still on this side of the divide.

In German it is verwaister elternteil (orphaned parent).

Several years ago, a professor at Duke University borrowed a Sanskrit word, vilomah (inversion of the natural order) to describe it.

I understand why people might embrace that word, but I cannot.

Losing a child is not an inversion of the natural order. Across the history of humans and the spectrum of nature, it is all too common. Among people, war, disease, and depression take the lives of the young and the old. In the animal world, predators single out the young and the old as easy prey.

So this thing I am is not – to this old philosopher – vilomah.

In Lakota, it is, as many things in life are, wakan.

I must pause here to explain that I am not Lakota. I carry the blood of Europeans and of Native Americans. I have a few drops of the blood of the Cherokee and of the Wyandotte, and I had some Lakota Elders who were kind enough to help me along my path.

My Elders were wise. Any mistakes or misunderstandings are my own.

When I throw my voice upon the wind and when I sing my prayers, I do so in Lakota.

My blood is not Lakota. My second heart is Lakota.

Wakan is a word without a concrete definition. It is a concept the tone of which changes depending on context. It means powerful, mysterious, sacred, and a few other things beyond language. It can mean all those things at once, or it can mean just one of them. Sometimes, it sort of means a couple of them.

The thing Western culture calls God is Wakan Tanka. Great Spirit, Great Mystery, Great Unknowable Power or Thing or Force that creates and destroys and teaches and guides.

As an American working in media, I like words to have solid definitions.

As a philosopher, I search for truth.

As a Native, I know some things are just wakan.

I have always had a robust definition of self. I am not just what I do or the relationships I am in, though those are parts of this thing wrapped in the flesh I wear. I look around at the modern world and the deep divisions in it, and I think perhaps a lot of that is based on having narrow definitions of self.

For several years, a large part of my self-definition was “father.” That part of my spirit grew every time she called me Dad or Daddy (depending on which part of her was speaking at that moment).

That deep change in how I saw myself was wakan.

It was powerful, mysterious, sacred, and a few other things beyond language.

When she chose to take her journey on March 1, 2022, it was as if I had been struck by lightning – a flash of powerful transformation. I stood half in this world and half in the world of the spirits.

Things that used to matter no longer do. They never will again. This life has done the very worst it can to me, and I stand free from all fear.

I don’t know if that makes what I am now wakan, but that is as good a word as any for how this thing beyond language feels.

For those of you in my tribe, English has failed us. Pick any word or awkward phrase you like.

We who are wakan – the bereaved, the orphaned parents, the vilomah – we understand things the rest of you do not.

Pray you never understand us.

Stu Clampitt loves both wisdom and efficiency. After nearly 30 years of chasing wisdom, he has not caught much, which means he is neither wise nor efficient. You can reach him by email at News@ReadTheReporter.com.