. . . ASHES. . . and something more.

What an odd circumstance when, after my father died and was cremated, that no one seemed to know where his ashes were located! A family member, wanting to keep them away from another family member, gave them to a friend of my dad’s who was said to have promised to take them to an ocean reef and place them there for eternity.

In the end, they sat in that friend’s garage for some years. After the first family member remarried and the “ash war” lost its momentum, the “other” family member was given Dad’s ashes which now rest at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

When I think of ashes it is a tangible experience.

Ashes, embers, cinders, soot. All remind me of fire and its trance-like ability to move me into reverie.

It may have been that first campfire as a newlywed, at Joshua National Monument, when Dan showed me how to clean a pot with hot ash, that awakened the awareness within me of how much I love fire. The mystery and power of fire and the respect owed to it; the beauty of flame and the transformation of substance to ash.

And the smell. I smell it now as I type.

Unlike my Papa, my beloved husband’s ashes are placed on a small altar in my dining room. In exactly forty-seven days he will be interned with prayers, story, and song at Pierce Brothers Crestlawn Memorial Park where, in various locations, his father, mother, and sister remain.

His cremation, with the Covid complications that ramped up emotions in unexpected ways, is a story in and of itself. I will just say it was so.much.more.beautiful than I ever expected.

As we work out our plans for his burial we hope to match the greatness we experienced in him with the simplicity that was fully his essence.

Until then, we travel in the mystery . . .