It seemed the right place in the beginning.  After all, it was where we made our family, a place my he loved, lived and died in.   Our whole life was there – the beginning – the middle – and the end.  So it only made sense that we would make my husband’s final resting place in our hometown.  But then I moved us 1,000 miles away to be closer to family.  It was my intention to make an annual pilgrimage so the girls could visit their Dad’s niche, change out the mementos and make that connection to their roots, to their Dad.  But, then the economy tanked and I simply couldn’t afford that intention.  We have a shrine set up in a quiet corner of our home.  A shelf filled with some of his belongings, a picture, a cherished prayer and a small urn with 10% of his ashes (it’s okay, you can get weirded-out here). It’s a place for them to go to make that connection.  But they don’t.  Something about it seems transient.  We’ll move again someday and then what? 

Lately, there’s a lot of reminiscing over the glory days of life in our hometown.  But,  I’m not so sure it’s our hometown they miss so much anymore as what it represents - their Dad.  Memories and bonds of our life there are growing more faded and distant.  The girls are growing up and the lines between fact and fiction are getting more blurred.  Life does move on. 

It spurred my thinking.  Would he mind? His home was really wherever we were, and we’re here now, not there.  Knowing him, he would say “Big Deal!  I don’t care anymore!  Take me to Portland if that’s what the girls need.” (permission to get weirded-out again if you need to).

So, you ask, how do you present such a subject to children?  No big lead up, I just did with a “so, I’ve been thinking…”  No big long emotional discussion.  Actually, they were all over it, wanting to settle everything immediately.  A couple of hours later we visited a local cemetery/mortuary.  We found a Remembrance Fountain with a lovely landscaped waterfall where his ashes could be buried with an engraved boulder marker.  We found a spot, sat there a while and the girls talked of how they liked the idea of being able to visit him after a soccer game, to come and talk to him about “stuff”, to someday introduce their own baby and tell him he’s a Grandpa.  Perhaps cemeteries, tombs, sacred burial grounds are endemic to the human species.  We need a place to commune with the dead, a place where our grief is safe, a place where the memories won't get lost and evaporate in the daily routine.  

But we can’t take him without leaving a part of him in his town, our town. We need to connect with our roots one more time in order to sever them. We will close up the niche and scatter that 10% of his ashes in the ocean. It seems only right that a part of him should stay there.  And then we will come home – the 4 of us.  And if we ever go back, it will be as one of the millions of other tourists that pass through.  It is no longer our hometown, but it was a good place to be from.

Even though he never set foot on where we live now, it’s time to bring him home.

EPILOGUE:

We traveled to the girls’ hometown to retrieve their Dad’s ashes.  We saw the house the girls were born in, old haunts, dear friends.  It was like putting on your old favorite blue jeans – comfy, familiar, but didn’t quite fit the way they used to. 

So on a perfect California day, where the ocean is a deep winter blue, not a cloud in the sky, the surf breaking enough to bring out the surfers and dolphins, the girls made a sandcastle mixed with their Dad’s ashes and let the ocean wash it away.  As they stood there, arm in arm, watching the waves, I realized I had made my peace long ago and now they were making theirs.

As the plane lifted off the next day I took with me a deep sense of gratitude.  I had the best parts of him sitting next to me.

Life is good.