Neighbors

Did I mention that my neighbor recently took his own life?  In his house?  Which physically shares a wall with mine....

 

I saw him that day. 

 

It registered with me that he seemed pre-occupied.  He was clearly agitated but met my eyes with a greeting.  That he would take his life that evening - despite my own experience - never entered my mind.

 

Frances and I were at work by the time he was "found", so we missed the cops, the detectives, the mortuary truck.  And our neighbors were too uncomfortable to tell us what happened.  So my first clue that there was pain next door was that my neighbor's grown children were around.  All of them.  A couple of times over the course of the week.  Having just been through my mother's death, I had a strange sense of deja vu.

 

So I asked the family if everything was okay.  

 

And the oldest son handed me a box - a mortuary box of ashes - and said.  "No, everything is not okay.  Here is all that is left of my dad.  He took his own life."

 

Just like that.

 

I appreciated the directness.  But shit.  Molly did not take her life in our home - but my neighbor's death brought Molly's death home.  Literally.

 

If I start talking about moving, you'll know one of the reasons.

Ashes

Both Molly and my mother were cremated.  

My father chose to inter my mother's ashes in a small cemetery next to her parents; it's a lovely cemetery in a small Illinois farm town.  Off the beaten track.  We won't visit often.  But I did want to take Dad to the cemetery at least once.  He deserved that - and I wanted to make sure the stone was installed correctly.  So we went two weeks ago.  I did not expect - and did not find - any special sense of my mom's presence there.   We've installed a park bench in mom's memory at our local town library - that seems alive to me.  The cemetery - not so much.

When Molly died, a thoughtful friend asked if she could pick up Molly's ashes and hold them for us until we were ready to to claim them.  We IMMEDIATELY took her up on her offer, but for the last four years I have expreinced a nagging sense that we needed to buck up and free Molly's ashes.  It's so final.  So hard.  And Frances and I didn't have a strong sense of what we should do with them.  Hence - four years. 

We got the ashes back last week.  So thoughtful: our friend gave them to us in a beautiful box - not the sterile white box from the creamatorium.  But there was no avoiding them - the ashes seared into my soul as we drove home.   It wasn't so much that Molly was present to me in any new way - it was that I needed to honor them.  Now.  Quickly.

I woke up the next morning before dawn and opened the box, taking the white box with the sterile plastic liner outside to divide the ashes into three bags.  I willed the neighbors not to watch.  The absolute humility of the whole thing was soothing.  Just a paper cup to scoop the ashes into plain old ordinary freezer bags.  That was it.   And then I took one of the freezer bags, put it in one of those cloth grocery bags that most of us have in our cars, and walked along the river near my home.  Beautiful.  Almost but not quite alone.  Moving water.  Flowers, butterflies and the occasional deer.  I climbed onto some rocks, almost slipped in the water and (illegally, I am sure) let Molly's ashes go.  Incredibly peaceful.  Very honest.  No pretension.  It felt right for me.  Molly is not in that river.  But a piece of me is.   The rituals around death, it seems to me, are for the living.

The other two bags  of ashes are ready for Frances to honor Molly in her own time.  Frances and I have never grieved at the same time.  This timing was right for me - Frances will do what is right for her.

At the Beach

For the first time in my life, I am taking a leadership role in a vacation.   I have had plenty of vacations before - great vacations - Hawaii, Florida, Paris, New York, the Pacific Northwest.  It's a long list, reflecting generous people who have opened their homes and hearts to me and Frances over the last 30 years or so.

But I have never been in a position - financially or  emotionally  - to book a vacation, pay for it, and move into the master suite.   After my mother's death, I knew that I wanted to use some of my inheritance to spend two weeks at the beach. I have honored Mom by including  my sister and her family for a few days...  which has insured that this experience is about a lot more than water ice and board walk games.   There is, I hope, legacy in these days.

As of today, we are five days in, and the time seems to be going incredibly quickly.  I sat alone on the beach this morning and watched the sunrise - made particuclarly  meaningful because the rainy morning offered a sedate sky with a watercolor rainbow.

During my sister's visit, she asked if I had any goals for this trip - a fair question,  but also a question that felt suprisingly personal to answer.

 Yes, I have goals for this trip.   I want the cacophony of daily life to quiet so that I can hear the stirrings of my own soul.  I want to offer Frances the space  I sense she needs.  I want the ocean to remind me that I my be wonderously made but I am not in charge of much beyond what's for breakfast. I want our friends to have fun and I hope that there are wonderful memories.

It's a fairly long list.  I know.   But as I sit on the  porch and type while the rain falls around me, I do feel my soul stirring...   a bit...   just a a bit.....  And the stirrirng feels something like hope.