A transcribed interview from the archives of an early "dying home" in Minneapolis. Located on the north end of a beloved community park, The Terraces are a place where people gather, grieve, and care for their neighbors as they prepare to pass on. This interview, between a mother and daughter who have supported the home for many years, explores the new ways that people are living and dying together in the Powderhorn Commune.

Daughter: Alright mom. I’ve started the recording. It's September 17, 2074, and here we are in Powderhorn Park.

Mother: Of course. Where else could we have possibly ended up?  

Daughter: It’s true. All roads lead! At least for us. Now, I wanted to sit down to—

Mother: Wait! Look at those happy ducks. Oh, look at those happy ducks! Honey, do you remember how sad the pond used to be?

Daughter: I do, yeah. And as I started to say, I wanted to sit down today to record you talking about the history of The Terraces for our archives team. The park itself is actually a nice place to start though. So, let’s talk about the pond restoration project. I had just moved away and you were looking for something to fill the days, eh?

Mother: Oh right. I was lost without you! Some peace and quiet. My snotty teenager out of the house. It was terrible!

Daughter: Ha! Thanks mom. The pond?

Mother: Right, the pond. Well, really it started with the gardens. There had been a small community garden here forever, but as food got tight everyone turned to the park. I mean, for as long as I can remember everyone turned to this park for everything. Catching up with a friend? Powderhorn. Needed to host a meeting? Powderhorn. Somewhere to cry and look up at the moon? Definitely Powderhorn. It had been the center of our lives for so long that as things got worse and worse we congregated here more and more. 

And . . . hmm. What was I starting to say? 

Daughter: The gardens. 

Mother: The gardens! Well, first we tore up all the grass. When would that have been?

Daughter: Uhm, the mid fifties? I was a teenager. 

Mother: That long ago? I can’t believe it. Well, we turned the park upside down. Dozens of people came out to dig and plant and weed from dawn to dusk. The city shut the water off, of course—trying to discourage us from taking over “their” property—but a crew would drive out to the suburban lakes and fill up this giant water buffalo several times a day to bring back. In that old truck, do you remember? 

Daughter: Wow, I had forgotten that actually. Now that you mention it, though, I remember riding around standing in the back with the hose a couple times. 

Mother: Conveniently, I’d forgotten that. Trying to give your mother a heart attack, were you?! I swear that truck must have run on prayers, not gasoline. 

Anyhow, people planted everything you can imagine in the gardens. More zucchini than anyone could eat, of course, and kale and collards—cabbage and squash. Big rows of hot peppers. Maize and sorghum. Bitter melon and split peas. 

The cities had always been pretty segregated, and even though lots of different kinds of people had always gathered in the park, they hadn’t left their bubbles very much. At least . . . not in my experience. 

The early years of the gardens were a step towards bringing people together, imperfect though they were. And are. We all needed food and the work was easier together. Bit by bit, people got over their nervousness, their skepticism, or their outright bigotry to work together. It turned out we’d all been kept apart mostly by the way life was set up. And food connects people. I mean, it wasn’t a perfect collaboration, but let me tell you—we ate better for it!

And . . . and oh gosh, remember the tomatoes? That first summer when the gardens just exploded? We feasted. As tomatoes started falling off the vines people gathered in the park and sat in the dirt passing salt around and eating them whole, like apples. 

Daughter: Oh, I remember the tomatoes. But you know, I really can’t remember what the park looked like before the gardens anymore. 

Mother: Oh I can. All dusty grass and crumbling staircases that didn’t match. And the pond. God, it was dire. We loved it—you know we did. But it was dire. By August each year the water would start to stink, remember? And that bright green algae would cover the surface like a comic book drawing of a nuclear waste vat. It was full of road runoff and garbage. For the first years I lived in the neighborhood, ducks would travel through and stop at the pond on their migration routes, but eventually they stopped coming.

Daughter: And the cleanup?

Mother: Oh right. You know I still don’t really understand how they did it. The plant punks, you know? It was like magic! For weeks every year they’d have us all out pulling certain plants and planting others. 

Of all things, they found this crew of divers who were willing to use their gear and time to muck around in the water collecting trash. People were traveling so much less by that time, so people had to bring their adventure hobbies back home. 

Someone scrounged up city plans and figured out which grates and drains were running into the pond and filled them with some . . . well, let’s call it “liberated” concrete. Of course, that increased flooding in the streets, so it was a give and take. Over the years, people pushed to tear up so many roads in the neighborhood and that made a big difference. In everything. It certainly helped the earth welcome more rain.

It was shocking how quickly things at the pond got better. Soon bugs were crowding the new plants on the shore, the water looked cleaner each year, and, finally, the ducks came back! And now look. Look at those happy ducks!

Daughter: I’m looking. They look very happy. So do you. 

Mother: I feel happy. It’s a clear day today. And, my kid is listening to me drone on about stories she remembers better than I do. What could be better? Now, you wanted to talk about The Terraces? 

Daughter: That’s right. Tell me about The Terraces. 

Mother: Ah well. Well . . . I don’t want to bore people! This stuff is happening all over now.

Daughter: Indulge me and tell me about them anyways. 

Mother: Alright. Well, up the hill from the pond—on the north end of Powderhorn Park—is a row of gorgeous brick buildings. They used to be condos and apartments you could rent or own, but these days they’re creche housing. What’s particularly special about The Terraces is that they’re some of our community’s designated dying homes. 

Daughter: Can you describe a dying home, mom? I’m not sure that particular thing exists all over.

Mother: Well, sure. It's just what it sounds like. A dying home is a creche house with some rooms set aside for people to live in as they’re preparing to pass on. We’ve got some basic equipment to care for aging bodies. We built ramshackle elevators and ramps and cut many of the doors wider to help people come and go. 

Some people feel most comfortable unwinding their spirit and saying goodbye at the home they’ve known for years before they reach the end. Some people like to go out to the woods to some of our homes out there to be with the trees and the water. And others like to come and stay somewhere that’s still in the city, but a bit more set up for their needs than where they’d been living, and where they can spend time with others who are preparing for the same journey. 

Daughter: Are they like the places you worked in when you were young?

Mother: Nursing homes? Oh God, no. No. Not at all. Elders locked away from the world watching TV alone all day and eating unseasoned chicken at 5 p.m.? A dozen “patients” for every underpaid nursing assistant who never got to sit down and rest her feet? Families and neighbors trapped at work or too far away to visit leaving thousands of people nearly all alone? No. Don’t get me wrong, the people I met working in those places did their best by the residents, but they were just awful institutions. Some hospice homes were nicer—and again, caregivers were doing their best—but aging and dying back then was all about money and efficiency and isolation. That wasn’t the way to care for our elders. It wasn’t the way. 

Dying homes let us get a lot closer to how the end should go. At least I think so. It’s not just our residents who are preparing to die that spend time here. They’re multigenerational homes. In the early years, we tore out all the first floor walls to build big community dining halls and meeting rooms here. There are kiddos from around the neighborhood playing under the long tables each night when we sit down for supper, and different arts collectives practicing or community groups meeting in the smaller rooms in the mornings.

Dozens of people stop by the Terraces each day to pitch in. Caring for the elderly, like caring for children, is part of the fabric of everyday life now. No one has to bear it alone. People at the end of their lives are able to contribute what they’d like to community projects, but they can also choose to rest easy knowing that their days of work are winding down. Old age isn’t relegated to a locked ward with fluorescent lights in some far away facility anymore. No, life and death are rich and full at the dying homes. We’re very, very fortunate. 

Daughter: Let’s talk a little bit about what it took to get here. Should we start with the last of the nursing homes closing? 

Mother: Oh honey, no one wants to think about those days. 

Daughter: Just for a minute! It’s important history. 

Mother: Well—it was just awful. Nearly everything was awful back then, but I worked as an hospice nurse so I had to see this particular stuff up close. By the forties they’d finished stripping every social service and health care institution they could in the states. The death and dying industry had been big business, but as soon as profit dried up and the federal subsidies ended, places started to close. Over twenty years, nearly every home in the country shuttered and turned people out onto the streets. Families that could took their elders in and some organizations held onto their facilities, but many, many people ended up all alone and—well, I can’t talk about the things that happened to those people, honey. In Minnesota, the winters, I—please, let’s talk about something else. 

Daughter: Okay mom, I’m sorry. Let’s take a moment. We can hang out with the ducks. [Long Pause.]

Mother: Thank you.

Daughter: Those years weren’t all bad though, right? Can you talk about the ladies at East and West?

Mother: Oh wow. I haven’t thought about those places in a while. You should track some of those women down for this history project of yours! That’s their story to tell. But I can try to say a bit since there wouldn’t be The Terraces without them.

Now let’s see, how did this go? 

Daughter: They were some of the last nursing homes open, right?

Mother: That’s right. They held on the longest, partly because the workers were well organized and had kept the standards of care really high. They fought hard for state funding—and against the bosses—to keep their jobs and to keep the homes open. 

Daughter: Just to be clear when you say organized—you mean politically organized, right? Did they have a union?

Mother: Oh, yes, thank you. I forget how the language has changed. Yes, I mean organized as workers. They were in one of the big old unions, yeah. A few of those women were actually part of the takeover in the late thirties that completely upended the biggest health care union in the region and made it vastly more democratic and political. That’s a fraught story for another day, though. 

Oh, now, what story was I supposed to be telling?

Daughter: About East and West. 

Mother: Yes, yes, thank you. East and West. Now let me make sure I get this right. So, at the very end, there were two nursing homes still open in this one suburb. When those facilities finally shut down, housing was really tight all over the cities. Thousands of people had moved to Minnesota over the years fleeing worse weather around the country, you know? And with the last of the nursing assistant jobs gone, all the people who worked at these places were out of work and close to losing their housing all at once. 

Daughter: So what did they do?

Mother: They occupied the damn homes and set up shop! You know, nursing homes weren’t nice places, but they had good bones. Big kitchens, independent generators for emergencies. And so some employees who were close with each other decided that if these facilities were just going to sit empty with padlocks on the doors that someone should go in there and make use of them! So they stripped off the horrible wall paper, brought their own furniture, and art, and music, and moved their families in! The owners tried to kick them out halfheartedly, but no one was going to buy the places by that point, and businessmen were looking to cut their losses and squeeze what tiny profit they could out of their last ventures. 

Daughter: And why did they call them East and West? What was the joke?

Mother: Oh, now, how did this go . . . 

I can’t remember, honey, you tell it. 

Daughter: Alright mom. For posterity. The two homes were close by, due East and West of each other. But the employees who worked in the home to the West were mostly from eastern Africa, around Kenya and Ethiopia. And the employees at the home to the East were mostly from western Africa. Many from Liberia. And so they called them “East” and “West,” but they were backwards. West was on the east side of the neighborhood and East was to the west. 

Mother: Ha! That’s right. Gosh, good thing I keep you around to remind me of all the best stories. 

Daughter: I’m glad that’s what I’m good for. Now, you said there wouldn’t be the Terraces without the women who lived in East and West. Can you explain what you mean?

Mother: Sure. So, at that time, with so many people becoming responsible for their elders all at once—and not having the faintest idea how to care for them—people needed experts who could show them the ropes. So, the former aides at East and West started hosting workshops. People would bring what food they had to barter for the lessons and gather in the old rec rooms at the homes to learn about helping people with daily living, elder nutrition, how to prevent infection and falls—all that. And the equipment! Those ladies helped us liberate some lifts and other tools from the last homes that we use to care for people to this day.

It was in those halls that people started to coordinate to support each other in caring for their aging friends and family members. Everyone realized that involving way more people and working together was crucial. At the early City Assemblies in the sixties people who’d met each other at workshops at East and West advocated for the dying homes as one way to use collective property. Without that gathering space, the idea for a place like The Terraces may never have really taken hold. 

A few of the women who’d led those workshops for years even came here for their final days. As they were preparing to leave this world, they were still teaching us how best to care for one another.

Daughter: Thanks for sharing all that. You’re right. We need to make sure to include more of those stories in this history.  I’ll reach out. Now, how are you feeling? Can I ask a couple more questions?

Mother: Well, alright. But after that, it’ll be time for my afternoon lie down. 

Daughter: Deal. Let's see . . . Okay I’m trying to find the words for this question, so bear with me. [Pause.]

I guess . . . I mean, you’ve seen basically everything in the world transform since you were growing up. But I know you don’t believe that the communizing project is “complete” and that . . . that more work is still needed. Where do you see cultures of death and dying fitting into that ongoing revolutionary process?

Mother: Ugh, a hard question?!  I thought we were doing story time!

Daughter: We’ll end with a story! Promise!

Mother: Alright, alright. Well, you know I can ramble about this, so I’ll try to keep it brief. 

I guess . . . I guess I’d say that in my years working closely with death, I got the strong impression that many Americans thought they would live forever. Or ought to be able to. While others lived in fear of having life violently taken from them or their loved ones by the state or environmental poisons. People had been living so removed from natural cycles on the planet and in their own bodies for so long, and had lost so much ritual and culture around endings and letting go, that they couldn’t find any way to relate to their own mortality. Or didn’t have the privilege to. 

The past decades of catastrophe and struggle have changed a lot. Even though the violence has quieted and people are responding to crisis better than ever, our fractured relationship to death still dominates. People still die in many ways that no one should have to. Transforming deeply held fear—and remediating ecosystems—will take more than decades!

Part of our job at the dying homes, as I see it, is to support people in their journey to make peace with endings, with . . . with letting go of what we can’t change—while also pushing people to be discerning about when it’s time to stand and fight! In some ways, that can be seen as individual, spiritual work. But I see it as part of our ongoing revolutionary work, too. 

In my experience, when people begin to think about death, when they really imagine walking up to the precipice of that great unknown—and work through all the feelings it brings up—it can help bring them back into, into . . . humble relationship with their own lives, and the lives of other beings and the earth. 

I also hope it will help people stay committed to the fight for justice. You know, we don’t want to recreate a culture predicated on some new form of hoarding and violence and competition for power. I want to see a world where people give freely of that which isn’t theirs to hold. In the end, for all of us, that’s life. A gift we can cherish and share abundantly, and which someday we have to let go of.

Daughter: That kind of collective spiritual transformation is a big endeavor. Can you share an example of how the dying homes are contributing? 

Mother: Sure, let’s see . . . There are so many efforts! I guess the dying circles are a favorite.

For the past few years, people living here at the Terraces have been hosting community conversations in the park about death and letting go. People talk about how they would like to die, if they end up with the chance to choose. They talk about how they would like to feel in their hearts and minds in those final moments. The peace or resolve they hope to carry with them. They share their anger and their commitment to fight against the things that still kill people before their time. A lot of profound transformation seems to come from people sharing their fear and their courage with one other. 

Newcomers often don’t say much. They look at their shoes. They pick up leaves and tear them into tiny pieces. Sometimes they get up and walk away. But many come back another week. The scariest things are those that we never let ourselves look at directly. 

Daughter: You make it sound so somber! We laugh a lot at the dying circles too!

Mother: Ha! We do! Let the record show: we laugh a lot too.

Daughter: Duly noted. One of my favorite things about those community conversations is the way that people have developed ritual and tradition together. People spend time imagining the celebration and ceremony they want to be held in their honor when they pass, and as they build trust, people begin to share their own inherited practices. Sometimes it’s contested and complicated, but we’re seeing rich, syncretic cultures emerging here. 

I promised you the chance to tell one last story. Do you have any good ones that help illustrate the new cultures of death and dying people are developing together around The Terraces?

Mother: Yes! Just last week we helped host the rites for a long-time Powderhorn resident here in the park, Sr. Treto. He was a carpenter who’d helped with lots of odd jobs around The Terraces over the years. He was raised in Mexico and grew up Catholic. Through his time at The Terraces he became friends with a group of young Jewish neighbors who are involved in our care collective here. They live in a big creche house a couple blocks over and used to have Sr. Treto over for game night every week. Apparently he smoked everyone at blackjack every time. Merciless!

Since he passed, there has been such an abundance of ritual and ceremony for him. People hosted el velorio, the wake, at the grills in the park. Neighbors brought vegetables from their gardens to roast. At the start of the second day, some goat farmers from up near Hoğáŋ Waŋká kiŋ—the river we used to call St. Croix—arrived with meat for everyone. It was a slow trip, but Sr. Treto had helped them with plans for a new barn one spring and they wouldn’t have missed it. 

He wanted the ceremony at the pond, too. So on the second night of the wake, as the sun was setting, neighbors and friends all gathered around the water in a big circle spanning the banks and shores. We sang as the rowers paddled his body across. A small raft was built just for this purpose from a tree felled in the park during a storm many years ago. We sang songs that have been written here in the neighborhood for times of grief and mourning. We sang traditional hymns in Spanish. We sang Wish You Were Here, too. He loved Pink Floyd.

Since the following morning the creche house from game night has been holding Shiva for Sr. Treto. There have been carpentry workshops and poker tournaments. Today might be the last day, actually. I only had a chance to stop by once. I lost the hand I played, naturally. 

Daughter: Naturally. That was good of you to play. You hate games.

Mother: Ha! I do hate games. But I liked . . . oh, now, what was his first name? Gosh that’s terrible of me.

Daughter: Don’t be hard on yourself. It's getting late and you’ve done great today. His name was Juan.

Mother: Juan. Yes, thank you. Juan Treto. He was a good man. 

Daughter: He was. Now, it sounds like it's almost time for that nap. As we’re wrapping up, is there anything else you’d like to share about the Terraces, mom? 

Mother: Well, sure. [Pause.]

Now, I know you’ve heard me talk about this, but I’ll say it anyway. All my life I dreamt of a place like this. When I was young, my biggest fear was that I would get sick like my mom did and end up alone and terrified and dying with no one to care for me. When everything was finally cracking open and people started talking about building spaces like The Terraces for everyone—no matter what they had or where they came from or what kind of relationships they were in—I just couldn’t believe it. I felt such relief and joy. It’s been the honor of my life to serve here on the lead care team for the past many years.

And now what I always feared has come true. I’m . . . Well, I’m losing my memory, just like my mama did. But I’m not afraid anymore. I’m much older than she was, and I thank my stars for that. I know that I’ll spend my last days here at home. In Powderhorn. At the Terraces. I know that the care collective understands my wishes and that I will be safe and loved to the end by such a beautiful community.

And, I guess . . . 

I guess I’ll share that I’ve chosen to stop eating at the end of next week. I will usher my own body on, which is my choice now. Others will make different choices, but I know that’s what I want. I want to die with many of my memories and my personality still wrapped around me. I’m ready. The end is not without its grief, but when I think of how things could have gone—how they went for my mother and so many, many other people—I’m just . . . I’m just honored. To be here with you and all our friends and neighbors. To have made it to this new world and to get to say goodbye to it on my terms. It’s more than I could have ever hoped. 

Oh honey, don’t you go start crying now you’ll get me started! Both of us! Just like my mom. Ha! She was so weepy. 

Maybe I’ll see her soon. Who knows what’s out there after this! Maybe she and her mom are sitting at a long dining table—just like we have here at the homes—catching up with their ancestors and waiting for me.

[Long pause.]

Oh honey, come here. It’s alright. We’ve talked about this.

Daughter: I know, I know. It’s just—well, you know. 

Mother: I do. 

[Long pause.] 

I do. 

Daughter: Oh, mom, look. Up there. The heron. 

Mother: Oh, hello, sweet bird. Welcome home. What a beautiful omen.

Daughter: Let’s end there. 

Mother: Yes, let’s.