February 6, 2016

Fast forward

How could we know? How could we have any idea? We try to stay on the tracks, hang on through thick and thin as they say, do what we think is expected, play by the rules, sign the promise, keep the faith, be true to oneself and let go, learn to let go.

I have stood here before. Twenty seven. Alone. I knew it had to be done so I came here, stood here, said,”yes, this will be okay.” Sign the bill of sale, take the paper. I have stood here before where my mother’s ashes would be placed when she died. She was dying. Someone needed to plan. I am looking at the signature, my twenty seven year old’s signature, signing for my father, my brothers, my grandmother, me, her daughter, her friend.

The world changes from an inflatable ball to a life raft. From the zodiac to an iceberg, from the iceberg to a polar bear looking for food for her babies in her homeland that is shrinking because of where I stand, where our ashes and bodies go because we cannot let go and scatter the ashes back to the earth.

And the pattern has been set from long ago. To build pyramids or anoint caves, burning pyres, digging graves, lowering the casket, or sealing the ashes in a metal box and placing them in a place where there are others in a hall made of marble and a floor made of marble and large stained glass windows and row after row and hall after hall of small name plaques made of bronze to last forever and forever where I am standing.

And the legality of perpetuity is as ominous as the place where I stand. Forever. I try to unravel what was made legal. The rite to occupy the space, not own, but interment. To inter is “between”. And because we are human, interment is described other than real estate. The right to interment.

So when I try to unravel what I started and signed in my father’s name, it is not so easy. My mother died and he remarried. He died and was interred here, before the place I stand. His second wife now has the rights of interment. She died and the rights go to her children, if none, her siblings, and then their children. It looks like I may not be able to wipe the slate clean as intended.

Hold on. I doubled back a year later or less and bought the crypt below hers. Only one row away. I would be there with her. That is grief, that is not only hanging on, that is sadness and terror. Alone.

We go on. Standing here every day does not move me forward. I leave and do not go back. There is no place for flowers. The walls are marble. There are row after row and after row of small bronze plaques with the dates of birth and death. It is too final for me. I leave. I do not come back until today.

The good news is we got them out. My brother was slow in letting go. But we did. He took them to Virginia, my mother and grandmother and father. He strew the ashes on a hill in a most beautiful small town cemetery, a hill overlooking the valley not far from where we lived. And I followed with a basket of dried flowers from my garden and glass marbles of all colors and scattered where I knew their ashes were. This was the first time I could take flowers that would be close, scatter glass marbles for headstones, lights for the heavens to see. Free.

We are free. We let go.