Avoiding the Inevitable

After weeks of procrastinating about putting my Mom’s ashes and the ashes of her cat and dog in the small garden I made in her memory, last night was the night. I had no choice. We leave tomorrow to gather with my sisters and their families to spread my Dad’s ashes with my Mom’s. I had all kinds of marks in time where I was going to put the ashes in the garden:

v  Before Summer

v  Before Ashleigh moves to Connecticut

v  Before we went to New York to visit friends

v  Before Aly leaves for college

I had been avoiding the inevitable and I was backed into a corner. I did not want to go with my family expend all of our emotions spreading ashes and have to come home to do it all again I knew I could not take it. My thought was that having my sisters there when we spread my parent’s ashes together where our families had enjoyed time with them, would be healing and a beautiful ending tribute to the two people that had brought us all together. I did not want to head home alone and have to face the remaining task of spreading the ashes here too.

I waited all day. I ran errands, came home and made dinner, did chores in the yard and weeded the garden where her ashes would rest. Then Mark and I stood in our pool for a few minutes talking and cooling off and when avoiding was no longer an option I climbed out of the pool, picked up the ashes and began to spread them in the tiny garden. I started with Mom’s cat Mandy, added her dog Cassie and finally I added Mom’s ashes. Just about half of her ashes so there would be some to spread tomorrow night too and then I cried.

It is hard to explain, my Mom has been gone four and a half years, but it feels like we never had an ending. There was always a drama or frustration and no time to just let the idea of her being gone settle in. We had work to do to protect what she had put in place for her family. Now that work is complete and we are all ready to let our parents go, but first we must spread their ashes, morn a little, cry a lot, hug each other and share stories and then finally heal. The procrastinating is now over and the inevitable has finally happened…it’s about time. 

Miss Mari's Garden