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.