A Eulogy for Micajahala

[bonus] issue 133 - 11th April, 2021

DCH: I imagine more than a few of our readers have lost loved ones within the last year. Thought it might help to share the eulogy I wrote for my mother on February 1st, after she died in January.

If you’re struggling with grief, please reach out to someone (link is for “local grief hotline”, so it should find something wherever you are).

Micajahala Spradlin Harvey, my mom, died last Thursday. She died at 82 years old on a snowy January day in Virginia. Like her own mother, Lucy.

She was born in McDowell, Kentucky in the summer of 1938. A few months after Superman made his comic debut. She’ll always be a super-hero to me.

She taught her children the difference between might and right and how the two are almost never the same. That real justice, real compassion meant comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. We carry that lesson in our own Biblical names:

• Stephen, full of faith and known for welfare.

• Rebecca, praised for her kindness and generosity.

• Daniel, exalted for wisdom and righteousness.

Many in the family still think of me as Clayton. She named me after Clayton Moore, the actor who portrayed the Lone Ranger in TV and film. An extra reminder for me to be moral and just.

And I need that reminder because I am numb and full of anger and hate right now.

For the longest time I thought death preoccupied my mother. And you’d be forgiven for thinking the same because she was always surrounded by it. Her father, William Cager Spradlin, died when she was only 2. She lost older siblings in the wake of war and to the coal mines that still dot the Appalachian landscape. And still more to the vagaries, tragedies, and injustices of the passage of time.

But it was never death that was her focus. It was memory. It was love.

She wanted to honor those she loved, lost, and never knew. To celebrate, remember, and cherish the stories of family, friends, and other loved ones. To take them into eternity.

As a result, genealogy was one of her biggest passions. She spent more time at the library in Virginia Tech than some students. Pouring over books and microfiche to sew together a patchwork quilt of our family’s story. Which given our Southern roots was as much, if not more, folktale and hearsay then actual history. Remind me to tell you the story of the three English brothers kidnapped by pirates sometime.

Those fictions she maintained as truth with a wink and a smile drove some people crazy. But not me, not really. Tall tales are as much a part of our DNA as anything else.

I learned to read, in part, thanks to her western comics. Steve, Becca, and I spent our childhoods drawing because Mom gave us a passion for stories. I’m a writer-of-sorts today because of her.

I talked about the power of names earlier.

She was born Dorothy. Dot to her 12 siblings. For whatever reason she hated the name and in time she chose her own. Micajahala. The feminine form of Cager, to honour the father she never knew. It means “one who is like God.” Again, a reminder to be compassionate and fight for justice.

I always forgave her for calling me Clayton even after I insisted on Daniel. I’d like to think she’d forgive me for thinking of her symbolically as Dorothy in her passing. It gives me some comfort in thinking of her shuffling off this dingy black-and-white world. And walking a yellow brick road into the bold technicolor of the next. You’re not in Kansas anymore, Mom.