I did something good yesterday. Good for myself, my children, my in-laws and Coleen’s family and friends. And for Coleen. It was something I have written about here and thought about doing since September 19th of last year. The Episcopal church calls it a “Committal” and I suppose most other religions do as well. It is where a person’s remains are buried or “committed” to the earth from which we all came.
The day was exactly as I had envisioned it would be. It was a beautiful spring morning with the sun shining brightly on us. A slight coolness in the air was offset by the warmth of the morning sun. The scene was set when we arrived although it was quite barren. There was simply a small table placed atop a piece of artificial grass that cover the hole where Coleen’s urn would be stored for eternity. There was also a temporary shelter tent over the area. I placed the urn on the table and a wreath of flowers around it. We had two additional flower arrangements flanking the table and Coleen’s portrait on an easel just off to one side. With those few additions, what was originally a somber funeral scene was converted into a memorial celebration.
Guests began to arrive. The cellist I had hired was setting up her performance area under the shelter. My granddaughters were sitting in the front row in small camp chairs busy with coloring and reading activities. We wandered among ourselves, greeting each other with hugs and sympathetic smiles. Knowing what an honor it was to be where we were but saddened by the occasion. Sharing a few tears and remembrances as we all took in the absolute beauty of the day. A day Coleen would have cherished and embraced.
The cellist stated the prelude to the service with a song by Sting called “Fragile.” It is a very tender song with a repeating lyric of “How fragile we are.” Of course, there were no lyrics that morning but I knew what they were. That song was part of the soundtrack to our life. She then played some excerpts from the Bach Cello Suites leading up the beginning of the service.
I asked my son Patrick to read a poem before the religious part of the service started. It was one of Coleen’s favorites, “Celebrate the Journey,” and has such sentimental and emotional history for us. And I wanted Patrick to deliver the poem’s message in honor of his mom. The retiring pastor from our church, Mother Liza, then performed the brief Committal Service and our cellist played “Amazing Grace.”
As this was all happening, I stood in the middle of the crowd but with no one in particular. Although I had planned and orchestrated the event, at that time I was a participant, a grieving observer just like everyone else. I had intervals of tears all morning long and especially during the service and when I looked at Coleen’s portrait. At the same time, I had feelings of great joy and love. It was an awkward conflict of emotion but not unlike what I had expected.
As the service concluded and “Amazing Grace” was playing, I went to my daughter Lindsay and we hugged each other and cried briefly on each others shoulder. We both said “I love you,” and talked about how much Mom would have loved everything about the morning. I then found Shauna and Patrick and did the same then went to every guest and shared a hug and a tear or two. I don’t know about the protocol of that but I can say that it felt good for me and I imagine for them as well. Coleen’s parents were especially emotional and I think the service helped them with some closure.
I did not want the service to end sadly and neither would have Coleen. I arranged for the next song to be “Here Comes The Sun,” a favorite of our granddaughters, and I could not have made a more perfect choice. The sound of that music playing so brilliantly on a cello just seemed to alter everyone’s mood from overwhelming sadness to one of optimism and joy. The sun was shining, people mingling, spring in the air, renewal, replenish, rebirth. It just all seemed to suddenly make so much sense.
During the last days of this life, Coleen was asked by Lindsay and Samantha several questions including what her favorite song was. She answered “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” by Crowded House. That song closed the ceremony on another positive yet very reflective note. I was very happy to hear it and thought it a wonderful tribute to Coleen and the day. We all returned to our house for lunch, drinks and conversation before people started to depart and return to their own lives leaving the memories of Coleen for other times.
I stayed though. And later I returned to the cemetery and Coleen’s new gravesite. It looked different that afternoon as I’m sure it will most times I visit. The tent was gone, the urn had been placed in the ground along with the wreath of flowers and had been covered with the earth. The other flower arrangements were on top of where the hole had been dug and they looked magnificent in the glow of the afternoon sun. Before I left for home that morning, I gave the urn one last kiss and one last touch. I can’t do that anymore but I know where it is. Yesterday afternoon, I put my palm on the ground and could almost feel a flow of energy. I’m going to keep trying that.
April 21, 2014 will be a new date on my calendar. It will be the day that I did something very good for a lot of people. It will be a day that turned out exactly like I envisioned it to be. It will be a day of change, of closure, of renewal, of rebirth. I was worried that I waited too long to have Coleen’s burial. As it turns out, I waited just long enough. People had time to move past the mourning and grief of her loss and were able to find the joy and love that she created in her life and left behind as gifts to us all.
The weather today will be sunny and warm. It will be a perfect spring day. Spring is the time for renewal and rebirth and I notice that all around me as flowers are returning as are buds on branches of the bushes in front of my house. If all of the springtime symbolism holds true, today will be a reawakening for myself and my family. Not only will today be marvelous in its weather, it will also be cause for great celebration as we say our final goodbyes to Coleen.
I started that process again late last night before I went to bed. I was turning off the lights and paused over the urn in my dining room that holds her ashes. That of course, is the cause of my emotions as it will be buried today in the cemetery Coleen picked out. I have kept it with me since she passed away seven months ago but today I will return it to the earth where it now belongs. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” That is spoken at many funeral services and I expect to hear it again today. I want to hear it again today. I want to be reminded, to be told that Coleen’s ashes belong as part of the earth where they can be everywhere at once. Where she can reach out to all of us regardless of our location.
Last night I knelt in front of Coleen’s urn and cried. I kissed it and touched it and placed my forehead on the coolness of the marble surface. My tears wet the urn and the Philodendron plant that sits atop it. I did not care about that though. I like the idea that my tears have stained the urn and when it returns today to the earth, it will return with my tears upon it. I cried because I am sad to see it go. The urn has comforted me all the days since Coleen died and part of me wants to keep it forever. I cried because today when I leave it behind, I will be saying my last goodbye.
That’s what I thought last night. This morning I feel a little differently. This morning I am energized more by the excitement of the day. My daughter Shauna touched me greatly yesterday with a gift. I have a little velvet pouch that holds a small amount of Coleen’s ashes and Shauna gave me a beautiful container to put it in. I am losing the urn but it is being replaced with something new that will provide me with the same feelings and thoughts. It’s not exactly the same but I like to think of it as a new replacement. Different look, same function. My daughter Lindsay sent me a text last night. In it was a photo of a label from a tea bag that said “Our head bows and our heart is filled with love and joy.” She was having a cup of tea and that message was on the tea bag. Lindsay took as a sign from her mom about how we would all be feeling today. I agree with her.
Yesterday was Easter, which as a dear friend reminded me, is a time of renewal and new beginnings. Today is the day after that and it promises to be filled with the joy and love the tea bag predicted. It will come with its share of tears too, as we remember the wonder of Coleen.
I received a whisper of my own yesterday. I had random music playing as I prepared dinner and I heard the song that Coleen said was her favorite just weeks before she died. It’s called “Don’t Dream
It’s Over.” And I never will. Today Coleen’s ashes will be committed to the earth but her memory and presence will never be over.
I used to have a boss who had a unique philosophy regarding decision-making. His mantra was “I try to put off making a decision as long as I can because if I wait long enough, sometimes the decision gets made by itself.” I always thought that was a poor strategy, especially for a boss to adopt and employ. I don’t have an issue with waiting until all the facts are gathered before deciding, I just don’t like the procrastinating. I can’t say if my old boss and his procrastination philosophy was spinning through my head when I decided last September to postpone the final committal of Coleen’s ashes to the earth until “sometime in the spring” or if I am just making the correlation now. Either way, I am regretting my decision to wait.
At the time, it seemed the right thing to do. Coleen had been cremated and there was no urgency to do anything with her ashes (or cremains, as the funeral industry likes to say) so I decided to decide later what to do. I liked my decision at the time. We had been through so much already I thought it would be better to wait until later to take that final step. It would give me time to find the perfect burial plot and come to terms with her death. We could have one more chance to gather in her memory and say goodbye.
Today, I am six days away from the day that Coleen’s urn and ashes will be buried, committed as they say, to her final resting spot. It will be in a beautiful spot in a beautiful cemetery that she hand-picked. I have made all the arrangements and have invited all the appropriate guests. Mostly just family with a sprinkling of close friends Coleen gathered over the years. Some out-of-town guests but mostly local. The priest from our church who presided over Coleen’s funeral service seven months ago will perform the committal service also. She had previously counseled Coleen and knew her well and as she is retiring at the end of this month, I wanted her tp do this final service for Coleen. I have hired a cellist to perform briefly before and after the service. During Coleen’s final weeks and days, she developed quite an affinity for the cello. I played cello pieces on the stereo at home while she was resting in our living room and on the night she died, we had them playing in her Hospice room. I have no idea what her final thoughts were, but I know for certain the last music she heard was from a cello. Six days from now we will all hear it again.
In my planning, I have reopened so many wounds. An old friend once spoke of recreating old pains as “ripping out sutures” and I feel that is an appropriate description for what I am feeling. I have these scars all over me. They are on my heart, on my soul, in my memory and they flow through my entire being. They are mostly at bay, controlled by my activities and my reluctance to constantly live in the past. The scars are a result of the open wounds created by losing someone so close and the resultant slow and deliberate healing inspired by so many factors around me. I have heard it said that the wounds heal, but the scars are there forever. I feel that way today. Except I feel like it is necessary to let the wounds heal a second time as I have ripped them back open. Wonder what that scar will look like?
Much of me today wishes this were all over. That I would have done the burial at the time of the funeral. One death, one day, one set of wounds and scars. Instead, in my decision to delay the inevitable, I feel I have created a monster. For myself at least and quite possibly, everyone else as well. I have had Coleen’s urn in my dining room since September and truthfully, have almost considered keeping it there permanently. Not that I would do that, but the thought has occurred to me. But isn’t that just me holding on? Of course it is. My decision to postpone the final piece of Coleen’s life is all about me and her and us. It’s me digging in and pulling back on the rope with all my strength to keep from letting go. It’s me refusing to commit her ashes to the earth because she still belongs with me and I with her. It’s me refusing to say my last goodbye.
I didn’t think this would be so hard but I have been wrong about so many things in my life, I shouldn’t be surprised to underestimate this one. People say this is good, it will bring closure. In a way I thought I already had closure but I guess as long as I still had the urn in my possession, there was still closure yet to come. Six days from now, that will happen. We will gather beneath a tree on a sunny spring morning. There will be family and friends and two beautiful granddaughters running through the sun. There will be flowers and tears, the wonderful music of a cello playing and words spoken in Coleen’s memory. It will be a beautiful experience and the attendees will talk fondly of it for years to come. And my wounds will once again begin to heal and my scars will start to reform. And then maybe my procrastination will somehow make sense. Six days from now, enough time will have elapsed that we can embrace the wonder of Coleen’s life. Seven months ago, we were still mourning the loss of it.
This morning I poured too much cream into my coffee and it turned a light shade of beige and tasted funny. I thought immediately of Coleen because she was very picky about how much cream went into her coffee. Many was the time I would have to drink a few sips from her cup, making room for more coffee, after she rejected my first offering because it was too light. Funny how things unremarkable can trigger memories like that. Just the parts and pieces of everyday life the two of us shared and didn’t necessarily pay much attention to can suddenly stand out now at unpredictable times.
It’s past six months now since Coleen’s death on that September evening. I am just now getting around to having her ashes buried in the cemetery plot I bought back in October. In two weeks, her family will gather as the priest from our church who presided over Coleen’s funeral service will say a few words. We won’t be at the cemetery long. When I leave there, I will be leaving behind the beautiful urn containing her ashes to be buried beneath a headstone I have not yet purchased. I do not know what else I will be leaving behind that day. I have no idea of the emotional impact of that morning but I expect it to be significant. What else will I be burying along with that urn of ashes?
Her urn has been in my/our dining room since the day of her funeral service. Since she was cremated, I did not feel any urgency to pick out a cemetery site to memorialize her. Once I did select one, I decided to wait until the spring to have a ceremony. I was a little bit selfish with that decision and sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have done the burial the same day as the service. It would have been all at once and would have been over by now. People would have had a place to go and take flowers to and talk to her. Looking back, I think it would have especially helped her parents to have that opportunity. They are from a generation where visiting cemeteries on certain days is very common and I think that may have brought them some closure.
Instead, I kept the urn close to me. It has a place in my dining room surrounded by some of Coleen’s precious plants and where it gets a lot of afternoon sun. Coleen sometimes stood in that window when the sun came through and relished in its warmth and light. I have held my hand to the urn many times during the past six months. I have knelt in front of it, placed my forehead on it, kissed it and shed many tears. It has brought me equal amounts of comfort and sorrow, sometimes independently, sometimes both at once. It is beautiful and I will miss it but it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to all of us and should be shared with everyone who loved and lost her.
Before she died, Coleen and I discussed the resting place for her ashes. She had no specific place in mind to be spread and when I mentioned that it might be nice to have a place to go, We decided on the cemetery not far from our house where she used to ride her bike through. Her plot is in an older section of that cemetery where there is a lot of sun. There is a tree just a few feet away that offers some shade every day, too. She would like the part sun, part shade location.
When the service is completed that morning and everyone comes back to the house for a catered lunch and drinks, I will have left Coleen’s urn and ashes behind. That’s all though, except maybe the fact of her death. But everything else, everything that was always important to us like our family, our memories, our love, that all comes back to the house with me. That will always be with me.
I have known my Uncle Bill all my life. He was a late in life baby and his sister, my Mom, was very young when I was born. As a result, only eight years separate My Uncle Bill from me. It’s not that those eight years made us close because we haven’t been. My family moved away from the little Ohio river town of Martins Ferry when I was about two years old and although we returned to visit frequently, the distance was enough to keep me from knowing my uncle that well. I remember him as kind of a cocky teenager and very athletic. He was a baseball, football and wrestling star and went to University of Tennessee on a football scholarship.
Through the years as a child, I would see Uncle Bill on Thanksgiving or Christmas most years. He settled in Tennessee after college and has lived there since. Now, and for the past 25 years or so, we get together on the first weekend in August for our family reunion. I see him several times there, then no more for the rest of the year. We make sporadic phone calls to each other and always say we should do that more often but we never do.
This year though, things have been different. Since last June, Uncle Bill and I have spoken quite often. Circumstances have dictated that and I wished they were enjoyable and celebratory events that brought us together but they have not been. Last year, Uncle Bill lost both of his sisters, his only siblings, within less than three months of each other. He was also diagnosed with early stages of dementia. The illness and death of my mom kept he and I in touch via phone and he stayed at my house for the weekend of her funeral service. I won’t forget how confused he was that weekend. It started with his air travel here and continued all three days of his stay and right up until I walked him back into the airport. He was not the same Uncle Bill I have known. I remember how good Coleen was with him. She talked to him constantly and made him feel very comfortable. She even took him for a walk one afternoon and he got tired after about 10 minutes. The confusion I first noticed two years earlier as he and I played golf had gotten worse and was noticeable to everyone but him.
I called my Uncle Bill a few days ago. Actually, I was returning a call his wife had made to me. Since I lost Coleen, they have been very attentive to me by staying in touch to see how I am fairing with things. I feel in some ways I am a replacement for him now. I am the next relative up for him since he lost his sisters.
Uncle Bill and his sisters had a distant relationship but they loved each other. They argued and bickered a lot about things that didn’t really matter but always got over it. And they talked on the phone to each other. Probably not as much as they should have. I’m sure Uncle Bill thinks now that he would give anything to be able to call one of his sisters and tease them about something. He is a world class teaser.
We ended up talking that night for over an hour. I mentioned that my uncle is suffering from dementia and has frequent difficulty finding his words and pronunciating some of them. That hasn’t stopped him from talking though.
We spoke that night of many things, mostly his condition. We also did a lot of reminiscing and talked a lot about my mother and grandmother and how life was when we were both younger. I realized two things while we were on the phone. Firstly, it occurred to me how few people I have in my life to share those kinds of memories and history with. And that list will decrease by one if Uncle Bill’s dementia gets stronger. He was very lucid remembering places and people from my mother’s life, especially her three husbands. The only other people in my life now to share that part of my past with are my brothers and I’m not sure how much of that they paid attention to.
The second epiphany I had that night was about legacies and how fleeting they are. My uncle and I got on the subject of his mother, my Grandma Mabel who was quite a character in her own right. I have many vivid memories of her. After he and I conversed about her for several minutes I said to him, “You know, there aren’t many of us left that knew Grandma and can talk about her like this.” Uncle Bill got quiet for a second then said, “No, I guess you’re right.” She never did anything newsworthy in her life. But she worked hard, raised three children, saved her money, and lived a full life. I would like to know more about her but there is no one around to teach me except my uncle. I don’t know how much he ever knew about my grandmother’s childhood or her parents, but whatever it is, I better find out fast before I lose him too.
A few years ago, I reconnected with a long-lost cousin from my dad’s family named Casey. He was working on our family genealogy and needed some information about me, my brothers, and our families. He invited me to that year’s family reunion which I attended and where I met an entire new family of wonderful relatives. Casey introduced me to a woman who knew my father when he was a boy. She knew a lot about our family history. I remember Casey saying to me, “I have to get as much information from that old bird as I can. Nobody else knows what she does and she won’t be around forever. When she goes, it all goes with her.”
We had an old photo in our dining room of a man sitting surrounded by several children. It was an old photo, circa late 1800’s maybe. Coleen’s grandmother had given it to her and the man sitting was Coleen’s great-grandfather Nicholas. I often looked at that photo and wondered if that was the sum of that man’s life. If that picture had become his legacy. There are few people left alive now that know the names and history of that man and those children. Since Coleen died, there are even fewer. I gave that photo to her sister so she could try her hand at protecting his legacy.
I found boxes of old photos in my mom’s apartment after she died last year. Some of them were very old and I had no idea who the people were in the photos. I knew my Aunt JoAnne would be able to identify them and I would be seeing her soon at a family reunion. I took those photos with me and she recognized everybody in them. And it was a good thing I did because she died a month later and I don’t think there is anybody else who could have answered those questions.
I will see my Uncle Bill again in August like I do every year. We have known each other for a very long time but things will be different this year. We have both lost a lot since last we met and in some ways, we are all that we have left of certain people and times of our pasts. He is one of the few people left in my life who knows some of the things I do. I would like that to last as long as it can. Protecting memories, prolonging legacies.