This was the day after my mom died. She loved materials of the earth, wood and glass especially. She loved the color blue. We had traveled to Venice together in the 90’s and watched the glass blowers make beautiful Murano glass pieces. We had also been together on the Oregon coast, stopping in the glass studios along the way that make beautiful floats. We really loved a studio in Newport. It was one of the studios that made floats to place along the shore during the millennium year. Artists would make and hide them up and down the coast. Hundreds of people would search for them. A gift. We were there together in the year 2000. She had plenty of time to travel that summer as our town in Kansas has been hit by a tornado in April that destroyed the family restaurant where she worked with her sister, brother-in-law, and nephews. It took months for it to be rebuilt and reopen. Even tornados can be a godsend at times. This one gave us a time together that I will forever be grateful for.
She wanted to be cremated. My dad was not a believer in cremation, thinking a body should be buried.That seemed a waste of space to my mom, an extra tax upon the earth. A waste of money too. She was frugal to the end. But, she wouldn’t tell him, so she told me in the days before she died. It was up to me to pass it on. He wasn’t surprised, I don’t think, and didn’t try to persuade me to do anything different. Now, even he tells me he wishes to be cremated when he goes. “I might as well do the same” he says.
We went to the funeral home to make the arrangements. I knew as soon as I saw this urn that it was the one to hold her. I took the picture to send to my brother so that he could feel a part of it all. I don’t remember if he answered, or if I even asked for his approval. It just was.
My grandma, her mother, was very against cremation, something I wasn’t aware of until told by my aunt. I decided we would not tell her. We weren’t having a traditional funeral anyway, just an evening gathering of family and friends at the mortuary. My mom was very explicit about not wanting a funeral, not wanting a casket, not wanting anyone to be looking at her dead body. So she was cremated before the gathering and only the urn was present, placed among other objects around the room, vases and decorative boxes and such, so as not to raise my grandma’s suspicion. We told her the casket was in the back, just as my mom had requested, and that the February weather was much too cold for her to go to the cemetery.
Truth is, mom never went to the cemetery either. My dad keeps the urn in his living room. He is just fine with it there.
When she told me she wanted to be cremated she said she didn’t care where her ashes went. I said maybe I would take a little bit of her with me wherever I traveled and leave some of her behind. She liked that idea. After she died, my dad was adamant that all of her ashes stay together, with him. He is now starting to soften on that, saying it would be okay after he is gone to fulfill that for her. She loved to travel. She loved the world. She would love to be one with it.
The day before this picture was taken was one of the hardest days of my life. I was with her when she left. There is nothing more intimate than being with someone when they take their last breath. As I held her hand, I felt her last heartbeat. Then I felt the stillness that set in. A stillness that has never left me. I don’t know who I am, if not her daughter. I don’t always know how to be in this world without her. There is nothing out there that can make up for the emptiness. We had not lived in the same city for thirty years, and yet we were as close as any mother and daughter could be. Our lives were not consumed by one another, but the other was always there. Now, there is just a void.