A wake and funeral are to be held at Crow’s home, under the direction of Wendy MacDermid, and burial will take place on the family land, up the Middle Rear Road. A tart cherry tree is to be planted on the edge of the property to mark the place where her body will be laid to rest, and visitors are welcome to come sit, sing, laugh, caw, and cry in the shade of Crow’s tree any time. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Crann Na Beatha Memory Forest Trust Fund. As per Crow’s wishes, we share the following piece she wrote shortly before her death. Because that one always needed to have the last word, now didn’t she. This is Crow Fortune’s Swan Song:

If you are reading this, it is because I did exactly what I came here to do. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause, please, for the one and only Crow Fortune! She did it! She died! Just like she said she would do.

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a good death, but if there is, I hope I had one. Hope I didn’t make too much of a mess, or cause too much of a scene, or wreck anybody’s good time, and if I did, I’m sorry. Because even though I apparently succeeded in doing exactly what I came here to do, and even though it’s no secret that none of us will be getting out of this life alive, there’s still a tinge of failure that comes with the whole dying deal. There was no divine intervention from the benevolent Universe, no last-minute miracle of a happy ending, no grand triumph of righteous fate over snivelling misfortune. Just me, my quick blip of a weird, sad story, the end. The biggest failure of my whole life, this dying thing. And just look at what I’ve left behind: my old friends, my new family. A people and a place I didn’t realize I needed until far too late. But better late than never, I suppose.

As I sit here drinking my too strong, too sweet cup of Mama’s Stovetop Sludge, my eyes flitting back and forth between the small, lumpy, bald head of my newborn baby and the massive, smooth arc of orange in the sky that heralds the failing of daylight, I can’t help but think about what will happen when I’m gone. Is Willy gonna be able to properly manage this kid’s mop if she’s cursed with the cruel genetics of my bird’s nest hair? Will Papa Gyaltso go turning the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” into some sort of preachy Buddhist lesson, and will Nanny Peggy teach little Raven Jewel how to curse right? Dear God, what if my daughter gets all her fashion tips and dance moves from Char, and her coping mechanisms from Allie? These are the details I instinctively fret about whenever I find myself shrouded in a cloud of dark, quiet inevitability. Watching. Waiting. Oh death, you sneaky bastard, you.