Tag Archives: ashes

Remains of a Day. Part Three of Three.

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After a prayer, it was time to set the cloth bag into the earth. Margie reached over and down as far as she could and released. The sound of air being displaced was like when someone fogs their eyeglasses to clean them. Then there was a thud followed by tubular bass echoes. Marge put her hand to her mouth and we all looked at one another in surprise. “Sorry Mom,” said Marge. Then laughter erupted and poured into the hole right on top of our mother. It was the most beautiful sacrilege.

I bent over in hysterics and felt jettisoned back to the dinner table when we were all a little silly. We sat on unmatched chairs and the window sill around a fully leafed table. Mom’s spot was always on the western end of the food deck.  We always sang the Johnny Appleseed song like the national anthem and some of us must have heard “Plaayyeeee Ballll!” Things would happen. Things always happened. We reached for and spilled the whole milk. We retched up and spewed the whole milk. Someone often would end up on the floor curled like a baby and wishing he or she had worn a diaper. My mother, like an umpire behind the plate, would make the calls with authority:

“Sit still!”

“Oh, straighten up!”

“Oh honestly!”

“Someone sop it up!”

Then we would sit still and straight and wait. We sat with elbows on the table, like Judas in the ceramic “Last Supper” that hung off kilter above us. Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” would hush our immaturity, for a moment. We looked at our plates. We held cottage cheese on a spoon in front of pursed lips. We smirked at each other as our peripheral vision looked on the west end of the food deck. There she was, bless her, mouth open to receive a shovel full of gruel, and…she swung and missed yet again and a blob would roll down her front. Then ten umpires would resist the urge to yell with authority…”Strike!” She would mumble a disappointment and we would relax, smirk, wink, and sign to each other that another traditional meal is in the books.

One hundred years from now sounds of laughter will still work its way out of this piece of earth.

We all picked up a shard of sycamore bark and tossed our piece into the hole like a rose. We took turns shoveling the moist earth in and on her ashes. Then Mike, my brother in law, served again as grave-master. He came back from the shed with a tamper. A tool with a long handle and on the end was a square foot of iron which was flat on the bottom. It was heavy and compressed the orange soil. We laughed again as the symbolism of a son-in-law interacting with a mother-in-law was displayed in a vignette of a two-handed pound down.

More dirt was layered, more tamped down, and more tampered with holy, happy moments of goodbyes. My mother’s “Sentimental Journey” had taken on a transcendent ambiance and all her children were thankful.

In a message threaded to all of us siblings my sister Marge said it aptly;

I would like to add we had a good, sharing time, and placed Mom “carefully” into her resting place. You were all there in spirit with us, and now we must move on and make Mom proud of her children.

Yes, and a hundred years from now we will be with her.

Remains of a Day. Part One of Three.

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My mother’s ashes were carefully poured into several small popcorn paper bags. The bags were evenly divided into two mom-made Christmas stockings. One with the name “Mom” and a small jingle bell dangling and the other with the name “Russ” with a small jingle bell dangling. Russ was her second husband who preceded her in death. The two stockings were placed inside a cloth bag with giraffe skin material and a print of a giraffe on one side. My niece mentioned that mom would have done the same thing. Mom would triple bag the fragile stuff when she worked as a cashier.

One hundred years from now someone might dig up two jingle bells.

Right underneath the sycamore tree that my mother loved sat a three to four foot hole sixteen inches in diameter. My brother-in-law Mike prepared it earlier in the day and next to it was piled moist orange earth. The bonfire was a couple of yards away and the wind lightly sprinkled ash on us with a scent of carbon dated air. We gathered around and Margie held the weighted sack. There were eleven people circled, but I felt a much larger crowd, like when we took the “Big Picture” at family reunions.

One hundred years from now a reunion might take place around a celestial mountain lake.

I read a poem about the tree that stood over us. The sycamore stood over one hundred feet tall. My mother would often ask my sister Marge to take pictures of it. Mom requested to be placed under its shadow and embraced by its roots. I had come earlier in the day to sit under it, walk around it, and look at it from a distance. Its grandeur and uniqueness was breathtaking. Maybe in an odd sense it took my mother’s breath away. At its base there were ridges, grooves, and gray/black terrain that gives way to smooth ivory skin as it reached to the sky. My wife said to me that my mother’s skin was beautiful, even after her death.

One hundred years from now many branches will have fallen and maybe this monument of God’s artistry will be gone. Maybe this memorial will fall away from all memory.

I Picked Up My Mom. The last time was a month ago.

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She was in a thick Tupperware like container.  Black.  The black box.  I thought of the NTSB.  Was this the size of the unit found after an accident?  If I were to plug it in would it give the reasons surrounding her death?

I reached to pull her out of the funeral home gift bag.  There was no crinkly paper sticking out of the top.   How heavy are ashes?  The box was heavier than I imagined. The thought must have been the influence of too many movies.  I remember scenes where ashes were dusted on gardens, into oceans, and over cliffs where particles spread in the breeze.  It took both my hands to lift her.

In the end a full hug embrace helped her stand.  I felt bones under her skin.  Now she was contained.  Were these the remnants of the skeletal frame which was once upon in time?

Marge asked me how I was “doing.”

The black box sat between us like a punctuation mark.

I asked Marge how she was “doing.”

She showed me the giraffe material.  It was the spotty skin of a giraffe like the spots I counted on my mother’s arm.  Her ashes would be poured into cloth skin.  No Tupperware.

I thought of all the tears.  It was a small room that couldn’t contain them.  Now, a month later, I regret not sealing those drops in Tupperware. They have since evaporated.  Oh, to pour them in over top of my mother’s remains.  All our salt water sprinkled to help preserve her memory a bit longer.

 

“You have seen me tossing and turning through the night.  You have collected all my tears and preserved them in your bottle! You have recorded every one in your book.”  Psalm 56:8  The Living Bible.

“Sorrow, like the river, must be given vent lest it erode its bank.”  Earl A. Grollman