In all those tortured years, I could never bring myself to go there. I knew his grave was on a corner in the cemetery and I drove slowly until I finally found it. For some reason, I wasn't expecting to see my own name on the sunken tombstone, and it hit me hard. I got out of the car, knelt by his grave in the rain and wept for a very long time.
In the Spirit of Medicine features the essays of Dr. Arne Vainio, an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a family practice doctor on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Cloquet.
