Part Sun, Part Shade
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.
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