Trip to mother’s grave a healing experience

To all of my relatives in and around Nunavut: I would like to let everyone know that my mother, Mary Pudlat, my aunt, Tye Sagiaktuk, and my brother, their translator, Tapa Pudlat, travelled to Hamilton, Ont., to see their mother’s grave.

She went for TB treatment and never came back. I heard it’s a beautiful site with hundreds of other graves of people from around here. My grandmother is not alone there.

My mother brought a small stone with her. This stone was from all the family members who couldn’t go down with them. She left it on the grave.

I often wonder how the family managed to get through it when their mother didn’t return. The death of a parent is the loss of the past, and as difficult as it was, it will be nice to walk around the area, to see for themselves where their mother is buried.

It is the most difficult time for a family, but it is a healing process. I know there is a resurrection, and my feelings about religion have changed since I started reading the Bible:

“Now Thomas, called the twin, one of the four said to him, we have seen the Lord. So he said to them, unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers into the print of the nails, and put my hands into his side, I will not believe.” John 20-25, New King James Version.

I hope they will do well and have a safe trip down there and back.

Mikidjuk Utye
Iqaluit