I scattered my mom’s ashes in the arid hills of North Dakota.
As my family and I stood there, my dad told half-jokingly that she was conceived at the Bible camp nearby in 1945, and thus we were bringing her existence to a full circle.
As he spoke a short but significant encomium, I held a handful of these ashes in my palm and noted they were the exact same color and consistency as the tan, sandy soils of that region, just outside Medora.
This experience capped a week where my family visited the places of her birth and schooling and their many visits to the region. We saw the vast prairies that shaped her and felt her affinity for the landscapes, which seem to have the breath of life constantly moving over them. Pronghorn, buffalo, hawks, and pheasants were everywhere. Sage was abundant but in patches, and some family members felt its scent was not as strong and vivid as in the past.
On a part of the drive we listened to the music that accompanied her final days of life in January, a mix of gentle piano. My only physical memento is a small rock from that site, just as my only memento of my grandma is a wool blanket I lie on every day. But my mom’s love of music is something I can take with me everywhere.
The rock is that same color – a familiar light tan that I hardly ever see outside of that region. It is the same color as the bed of the many fossils my grandpa dug up, including a huge dinosaur femur. He and my mom were especially close but I have no memories of him because of the grim afflictions that took them both too early. We visited the tiny decaying farmhouse where he was born. It seemed like an impoverished abode but it cradled an extraordinary mind and spirit in the person of Grandpa Elmo.
The time for a solemn ritual was past. This was a gesture of tender farewell and a week of sharing warm memories. While my mom has turned to ashes in the wind and is also sitting in an urn in a hallowed corner of the house, other branches of my family are growing and expanding. My niece is learning the language in South Korea. My brother (not the angry and abusive one) is expanding his business and hiring people. My sister is raising strong little ones who love their grandpa. One of them loves dinosaurs too.
There is nothing more universal than the personal. Family, nature, death, and the continuation of generations gave me much to think about in the subsequent days. Nothing pierced me like holding her ashes in my palm and releasing this small handful into the breeze brought on by the setting sun. As I did so, I felt Ione’s greatest gift to me, which is an abiding sense of awe.
pseudoisaac 