Planted

The first summer after Mark died, the kids and I went to Yosemite for a family trip and to spread his ashes. I nervously decided to mailed the ashes to my daughter in California rather than have to explain to TSA what was in the box. “Your boy arrived,” my daughter texted me a few days later when they showed up on her doorstep. We arrived in Los Angeles and picked up both of them then crammed into a mini van to head north for our national park adventure. As those kinds of things go with us, over the course of a few days and many trips in and out of the van with the ashes, some of them spilled onto the floor. I tried to scoop them up as best I could but there were still dusty traces left when we turned over the van at the airport. I told Mark I was damn sorry about how that was going to turn out for him, and I imagined he would have rolled his eyes, and with the faux outrage he perfected over the years, said, “C’mon, Kath!!! You can’t really be leaving me here to get sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.”

Last year we went to Boulder and left some of his ashes in the Rocky Mountains. You would think it would be easier the second time around but it wasn’t. I never know if I’m doing the right thing or choosing the right place. I only know that these are places he would have loved, where for a brief time his burdens may have lightened.

This year we opted not go to a national park but rather to the beach – Gulf Shores to be exact. After we picked up our rental cars and headed to the house we were renting in Alabama, we stopped at a restaurant. We got a table that overlooked the water and my Pisces heart was in heaven. After a bit my daughter said, “Mom, look over your shoulder,” and I gasped. “Jeezus,” I said, “it even looks like his writing.”

There aren’t many of Mark’s ashes left but I brought a small amount with me again. This time I wanted to be alone and walked down to the beach one morning. Mark and I loved the beach, be it the ocean or the shores of Lake Michigan in our early dating years, and we especially loved it in the morning when it was quiet. I sat there and before long noticed a heron a few feet away staring out into the gulf. I waited for the water to reach me and slowly let go of the ashes. They turned and swirled, got caught up in the surf, and quietly disappeared along with the heron.

When we were in Yosemite, I wandered over to a group of people listening to a park ranger. “You’ll notice the feet of the sequoia,” he said. “These are big trees and they have big feet to keep their grip on the earth,” and I swear that once you see that in a tree you cannot unsee it. Mark loved reading about trees, about their secret language underground, and how they leave space in their canopy for light so the little ones will grow, but I’m not sure he knew how tightly they had to grip the earth to stay alive.

One day Mark lost his grip and there have been many days since then that I thought I was losing mine. Despite the distance and now years since his death, the same message seems to travel back and forth between us.

I’ll find a way to fall in love with where I am, you find a way to fall in love where you are, and won’t we have so much to tell each other when we find ourselves on the same side of the moon.