Ashes to Ashes

One week from today, my family and two of my sister’s families are meeting to disburse our parent’s ashes. We are heading to a lodge my Mom and Dad use to rent so that we could all spend some time together. Our plan is to celebrate their lives when we arrive on Friday evening, enjoying a delicious dinner and spending time like we did when my Mom and Dad would come from New Orleans to see us. We have had this planned for a long time and while I have anticipated releasing my Mom, I am not sure if it will be as easy to do as I once thought.

I have started a small garden for my Mom in the back of my yard that I plan to lay some of her ashes in and I have put this piece off for so long, always planning a better time in my head. Now my oldest daughter has moved out of state, my middle daughter has headed off to college and all my plans of having something with just my own family have fizzled. I have a few short days left to lift my Mom from this little wooden box and place some of her ashes along with her cat and dogs ashes (don’t ask) into my little memorial garden.

It is obvious that what I thought would be easy, will not be easy at all. Even as I write this I am tearing up and feeling anxious and I am realizing that when I finally release her ashes I will be releasing her. It is time to move on and return ashes to ashes, but it sounded easier when it was a distant event. There are no more emotional deadlines to meet and no one else to count on to see this through, its time and I must let her go. I’m not sure why I’m morning again, but I am.

Holding these ashes here was part of getting me through the years of legal drama. I would talk to this little wooden box often expressing feelings of frustration and sadness. I would talk with the lawyer or my sister and the little box would be sitting just inches away on the table. Sometimes I would light a candle and just sit quietly staring at this box filled with what is left of my Mom. It is time now to spread the ashes and release these last few years. It will be hard to do, but it is past time and it must be done. I am grateful that on Friday our family will have each other to lean when we can finally say goodbye to our parents and return their ashes to the universe, however I still have this one hurdle I must jump and that is to lay some of my Mom’s ashes in her little garden in my yard.