When my boy Chan died this summer, I just did not feel like putting out an obituary for him. I just didn't feel like I was ready to talk about what kind of person he was and who he left behind and so on.
Now that the toughest time of the year is past us, I do want to talk about my boy. Chan was born Canar Christian Sundown. Before he was born, I asked my mom, what kind of name I should name the baby. She told me I should name him Canar after my dad. Besides that, I wanted to give him a Yupik name that gave him a 100 percent Yupik label.
Chan grew up like any of my kids with the greatest attention and love any parent could give their children. Chan was the fourth of my kids and he was the one I thought would not graduate from school. I thought that because he was not the most advanced student in his early years of school. Out of all my kids, he was also the one that was the least interested in basketball. He preferred to play outside and hunt around the rivers and small sloughs with his friends while my other kids and others were playing basketball.
Of my three boys, Ekam was two years older than Chan and Wybon was two years younger, and they were always with each others company, playing around the house, eating together and doing what any normal kids do.
As Chan grew, he was the one who found it easy to fix bikes and soon moved on to the ability to fix snowmachines and other small engines. Because he often fixed bikes or put one together out of other parts, the brothers would sometimes tease him by calling him Chainairteq (Chain-eye-g-tick) which just means chain coming off the bike. Sometimes when they got mad at each other they would call each other these creative names. Another name they would call each other was "hot tamale." I will not mention any more of that name.
Chan grew up to be the most daring boy in our family who easily learned how to snowboard, to body board behind a boat, and could even do back flips when jumping off a snow bank. It was in his last year with us that he took a ride on a small piece of ice and video taped it while he was out netting for herring fish in the late spring as ice was still going out. At the same time, his other brother cell recorded his sailing away while laughing at the craziness of his last stunt.
Chan fathered three beautiful children that we value so much. The oldest one we adopted and are thankful daily we have him. We named him Toby. The other two he has are taken care of by their wonderful mother Wendy Chandler. The two are Christian Ross Chandler and Patsy Chandra Sundown.
A year before my boy died, my older sister was in my mom's house and she told my mom she just heard someone whistling. She asked my mom if she heard that whistling too. My mom told her that the only time our family heard whistling was when something would happen to someone close to us. A few weeks later, my sister's son and grandson died within two days of each other.
I was out in the springtime above the village and heard a whistling. I looked around and saw no one that would be whistling. I remembered what my mom said before and hoped that nothing would happen to any one close to me. Around the same time, my oldest son was out hunting for geese and was waiting in a blind by the mouth of a river. He heard a voice that said "look." My boy looked out towards the ocean and he saw a fire over the ocean. The voice told him, "Be Strong." In our area, when some one will die, certain people will see a fire over the ocean or land. When he got home, the only person he told of this fire was to Chan. During egg hunting time, my older brother went up river getting the usual harvest of fresh laid eggs. This happens in late May. He and my nephew saw a goose in the river and shot it. When they picked it up, it was a molted goose. My older brother thought, "gee, geese and ducks only molt at the end of June and early July.
Chan leaves behind his parents Harley and Joan, brothers and sisters Herschel, Thea, Ekamtalria, Wybon, Shayna, Angelique, Jerry, Theodore, Misty Blue, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Toby, his companion Wendy Chandler and their two kids Christian Ross and Patsy Chandra. Grandmas Mary Ann Sundown and Mary Tinker. God is good to us, he will be good to you....
Harley Sundown is a Scammon Bay columnist for The Tundra Drums. This remembrance was first published by Alaska Newspapers Inc. and is republished here with permission.