BROKEN HEARTED MELODY

“A Family Secret is a secret kept within a family. Most families have them...They can relate to complex issues such as... mental illness...suicide." 

I lost my man a thousand years ago - I think. 

I can’t remember for sure. 

I don’t remember my name. I don’t remember the names of my family. 

Sometimes I get faint glimmers of my man’s name - it may have been something like Wolf or Star, maybe Star Wolf. He was my Man, and I loved him more than life itself. 

I can’t remember the names of our children.  

That is much too painful to even think about.  

I found some of their bones last year, and the pain is simply too deep and still raw even after all this time. 

I can’t even remember what we called the land we lived upon. It was a time when our People roamed back and forth and followed the seasons and the land upon which our food came from.   

All I know is that it was many, many years ago that I first stepped out onto the place where I met him and lived with people who we each called family. 

It feels like it was a thousand years ago.  

I really don’t know, for the mists of the past weave their spell and perhaps it was all just yesterday and maybe it never really even happened at all and those who call me family in this moment may be right...I may belong in a mental institution. 

It was in the year those that stole our land called 1977 that I next stepped upon that ancient and oh so familiar soil. They now called it Kahkewistahaw after a great and wise leader who guided his People through times of great change. And though the name was different, when I closed my eyes, I knew every inch of the ground I walked.  

I remembered the land as if the hundreds of years that had passed could be counted like the fingers of my two hands. 

As I walked along the hilltop I was surprised to look down and see that my hands, the skin of my arm, my whole body was a pale sickly white instead of the ruddy glow of brown I expected to see. 

It was many years still before more memories began to flood into my heart and though I still could not remember names or exactly how much time had passed, I began to remember those with whom I had lived those many years ago. 

It was in the year of 2016 that I traveled to a place now called Avonlea in a land called Saskatchewan. I wanted to visit a spot I’d discovered years before, in this lifetime, where I had gathered strange rocks - so mysterious that all who held them felt their power and energy.  

I traveled on a hot summer day across the prairie, driving west as the sun slowly traveled from the east across the great stretches of rolling grassland. 

And as I drove, waves of memories rolled across my mind, filling my eyes with tears and images of a time that had passed so long before that little traces of its passage existed in the present. 

Over and over and over again I played a song on my car’s stereo… 

“Broken Hearted Melody”  

“Broken-hearted melody 

Once you were our song of love 

Now you just keep taunting me 

With the memory of his tender love. 

Oh, broken-hearted melody 

Must you keep reminding me 

Of the lips I long to kiss 

And the love I miss since he went away 

Night and day they play 

That broken-hearted melody 

That he used to sing to me 

When our love was young and bright 

As he held me tight 

Suddenly I found 

I was out of bound 

Broken-hearted melody 

Once you were a song of love 

Now you just keep taunting me 

With the memory of  

His tender love, oh 

Broken-hearted melody 

Won't you bring him back to me 

Sing to him until he hears 

For when he returns no more will he be a broken-hearted melody” 

I had loved this song for years, never quite understanding why it touched me so deeply. I had always believed it reached into some place that spoke of unrequited love and yet I knew that it went much deeper for me.  

Pangs of grief, longing and intense pain gripped and tore through my body. 

And as I drove, blinded by tears that seemed to obliterate the markers of the present year, another more distant time replaced the road I drove. 

I pulled into a deserted farmyard and knew that I had been here before - just not in this lifetime. 

Feelings of sadness, joy, fear, dread, happiness and profound loss washed over me, through me, around me, leaving no sense of being in the current year. 

And as I closed my eyes, I heard his voice, and the laughter of our children as they chased golden butterflies through fields that had never been farmed. 

With my eyes closed I could almost see him.  

Tall, lean, strong and smiling at me with a smile that shook me to the core of my being. 

For I did remember him…  

He was mine - he always had been and though our time together had been many years before, on this day it was as though that passage of time had never happened. 

And I remembered… 

My man. 

He was so strong. Both in body and spirit.  

And though he’d been asked many times to lead his people, he always quietly refused, preferring instead to lend his strength to those who seemed more willing to step into that role.  

Such power held no allure for him. He was content to be part of Creator’s Forces that gently guided him through a World filled with magic. 

He was content and in his contentment, I found my solace and my refuge. 

We’d known each other all our lives and from the time we were very young knew that we were meant for each other. Knew that we were two halves of a whole.  

We fit one another like a glove to hand and what the one wanted, the other knew - even before being asked.  

We rarely spoke - there was no need. 

I could hear him, feel him, taste him, see him reach out to protect me, often from miles away. Space was but an illusion for us and time was measured by the laws of a fourth dimension not yet mapped by the arrogance of physics. 

We lived mostly in a land who’s dimensions and boundaries few understood. We were wise enough not speak of this place.

We knew that such knowledge was feared by others, They thought they wanted to know what we saw in that land. when told, they would turn on us and accuse us of many things. Some that we knew endangered our lives.  

We learned to be cautious. 

We learned to hoard our knowledge and begin to turn only to one another for sustenance.  

And it is perhaps it was that knowledge that led to our downfall. 

For we were inseparable. Even as children we stayed to ourselves, quietly slipping away from all the others to wander along the hilltops and down into the valley.  

We’d spend countless hours exploring every nook and cranny of the land. We knew all the plants that grew and what their secrets were.  

We knew all the animals and named them all.  

He could call to each one and like magic, they would find their way to where we stood.  

Wolves and coyotes were his special friends and they would sing together in the full moon their cries intermingled so that none, neither the wolves nor the People who huddled around fires in fear of what roamed around the edges could tell which voice was human and which was canine. 

I was closer to the smaller creatures.  

I was a strange child, even amongst a People who understood strange. 

My best friends, other than him, were spiders and butterflies and all the many and varied insects that made the land their home. I could smell ants, following their tangy acrid odour to the place where they dug their home into the soil. 

Butterflies, moths, bees, wasps and all the winged creatures that flitted here and there would eventually find their way to me, caressing me with their silken wings, their buzzing, clacking, clicking language filling my ears with tales of their travels.  

They knew not that their life was so short and thus lived it to the fullest.  

Their secrets were soft and their dreams mostly filled with the desire to find the sweet tastes that fueled their flight and gave life to the next generation. I loved them all and spent hours listening to their stories. 

Together my love and I would lie quietly along the edge of the shallow river, watching, observing and naming all the inhabitants that made that place home. 

From season to season their song would change and as the sun slowly made its way south their silence became smothered by the falling snow. 

The keening winds that howled from the north would bury the sounds of their whirring wings and silence the beat of their tiny hearts. 

As we grew older, he and I, our love for one another changed.  

It deepened and grew and in the soft warmth of a summer night, on our thirteenth year, we became lovers for the first time. 

The act was as natural as that of our beating hearts and as we came together those measured separate beats melted and joined as one till neither of us knew where the other began or ended. 

Our love seemed complete and we were content to live as one, having no sense of where one began and the other ended. We simply WERE, and though it seemed enough, we knew it was not meant to be so. 

Our first children were born the following year.  

Twins. A boy who’s name I can’t remember and a daughter whose beautiful face stopped the breath of all who looked upon her.  

The sweet memory of their creation enveloped them both into the circle of our existence and life seemed complete. 

I wanted to be jealous of my girl, for her father, my man, loved her with a joy that sometimes pierced my heart.  

But it was impossible.  

She would raptly hold my man’s gaze to hers, cooing and babbling til he was dizzily wrapped around the grasp of her tiny fingers.  

And then, in the bat of an eye, she’d begin to twist and turn, her eyes darting here and there till she found me and then the smile that would grab my heart and erase any hint of jealousy spread slowly across her face.  

I’d take her gently from him and as I freed my breast and placed my leaking nipple into her mouth the look of utter contentment and pleasure melted my heart and we would gaze at one another with a love so complete that the rest of the world disappeared.  

Her father would come beside us, holding me in his strong arms and as I nestled into the safety of his chest, our daughter nestled into the warmth and comfort of mine. 

And as our son played in the grasses around us, we would drift into a sleep that pulled us all into another world. Even our busy, curious little boy would eventually be drawn by the lure of the sweet nectar of our dream world. He’d crawl over to our circle, find a place to rest his beautiful sleek head and drift off into a contented sleep, filled with dreams of chasing rabbits and catching fish. 

Every few years our People would travel, joined by many other tribes on a great journey towards the land of the setting sun. This journey would take many days and required much preparation and planning.  

We had made the trek once while we were small children ourselves and as we prepared for the adventure with small children of our own, we were filled with both anticipation and fear of the unknown. 

Over the winter the excitement in our village grew as we discussed who would make the trip and who would stay. 

There was much to do and much to organize. We would trade with People who came from lands so far and so different from ours that one could only imagine the places they described.  

We loved to listen to stories of vast expanses of water that never ended and tasted of salt. We were thrilled by descriptions of the great beasts that lived in these waters and provided food for the People and gave them much of what they needed to live a soft comfortable life. Their land was so different from ours, and unlike us, their winters were also soft and comfortable with rain filled days that left the People time to carve and dance and make fires and enjoy the company of one another as the days shortened and the night filled the great unknown spreading its dark wings around them. 

We listened to their tales of travelling through thick dense forests and crossing mountains that took them months to wind their way through. 

Our journey across the open grasslands seemed so boring in comparison, and yet it also was a time of great excitement for our People. 

The place we chose to meet was somewhat central and gathered People from the North, the south, the east and the west, some who travelled for months to that place along a gentle river that nestled into a valley beneath a soft ridge of hills. 

Game was bountiful, we hunted and fished and gathered seeds and berries and other fruits that replenished and stocked our brought from home. Our special treats were the foods that others brought. Salt that was taken from the waters of their home, fish and other animals that lived in that water and grew along its shoreline and fruit that we had never imagined could taste so delicious and be so different from those that grew on our vast grasslands. 

The many People that came used this gathering to share stories and tell each other of the places they had travelled and all the different People they had encountered. They would describe the journey, carefully laying out routes and markers to follow for those that wished to make the trek to other lands. 

And perhaps the most joyous purpose of our gatherings was to trade with others for things we could not find at home. And the most exciting trade was that of those looking for a mate.  

It was often a bittersweet encounter, for the more distant the People the more likely that the one choosing to mate with a tribe from a land far away would never again see the family he or she grew up with. 

But these were minor problems in a time that was anticipated by all. 

The winter of our 17th year we decided that our children were of an age that would allow us to join the summer gathering. 

We prepared well, stocked the supplies that would carry us to the gathering and chose strong reliable horses that would carry us and our children and the rest of our belongings. 

We left our home overlooking the valley early one morning, content with the knowing that the weeks ahead would leave us much time to be alone together with our children. We began the journey with others, but as the days passed, we ended up travelling alone as others left to explore things we had no desire to see. 

We were happiest when alone with no others to interfere with the energy of the circle of our love. 

Even our children would quietly fade into the background as they slept on the travois pulled by their sturdy little pony. 

And he and I would settle into one another, the gait of our mount, gently leading us to a sweet joining that left us exhausted from the crashing waves of pleasure that took us over and over again. 

We would make camp, settle our babes and yet again turn to one another with a passion so overwhelming that it swept us up and into a place that knew no time, no boundaries and measured the passage of time simply by the pounding of our hearts and ripples of pleasure that washed across bodies that merged and became as one. 

We ate, we bathed in a shallow creek and slept, wound tightly together beneath our light summer coverings. 

We would lie as one, gazing at a sky filled with sparkling lights and flashing streaks until sleep would finally fold us into the fabric of the velvet night 

And as we slept, somehow a small thread of fear began to wind its way into my dreams. I tossed and turned as glimmers of unease wove their sickly fingers along the edges of my soul. 

I’d wake - remembering and yet not remembering. I refused to pay heed to a deepening sense of unease.  

What happened next is something I can hardly bear to speak of. 

It is a story of its own for it tells of a great star that fell from the sky and swept away my children. It devoured my beloved as he frantically pushed me to safety and then in desperation dove back in to find our babies. 

I lost everything that day, my man, my children. And my deepest shame is that I lost the desire to carry the unborn child that we had begun on our journey. 

The mountains were too high, the valleys were too deep, neither of could reach the other side.  

Somewhere in my desperate attempts to meet, I lost my will to live. 

And so, I wait.  

It is a thousand years later and still I hear his voice calling me… 

“The mountains high and the valleys so deep, can’t get across to the other side. Don’t give up, don’t cry. Don’t give up till I reach the other side.” 

And I answer back… 

“I’m so lonely, I can’t sleep since the night they took you from my side. I’m a lonely soul.” 

He was my life, my goal, the spark of love that kept me on this earth and the day the stars fell from above, I knew my life was over. 

My prayer for the last thousand years has been that we will meet again. I don’t know exactly where or when, but if fate has its way…..we'll meet again someday. 

I won’t give up till we reach the other side. 

I won’t give up till we are no longer a broken- hearted melody.