My last hours in PA . . .
. . . and another closure.
On the morning my sister and I left for Florida, we did one more thing together to honor our family and have one final closure of sorts.
As we were going through all the things saved or left behind by our parents and brother, we found many things that were not burnable and things we could not bring ourselves to throw out or give away. My mom had saved every pair of glasses she’d worn since she was a young girl and also the cases she kept them in. Dozens of her scarves, her blue leather wallet with blue rhinestones on it that was her very favorite, things like this that there was just no way we could bring ourselves to throw in the trash. My dad’s bow ties he wore in his younger days, a couple of his wallets, a lighter he used at a time when he smoked, all things so familiar to us. At first we weren’t sure what we were going to do with all this stuff, but we did know we just couldn’t bring ourselves to throw it away. So we started a pile (piles) and hoped that the answer would come to us. And it eventually did.
The plan was that on Saturday night we would have the bonfire and Sunday we were going to dig a hole on the property and bury all the rest of the things. As I mentioned before, Saturday night was cool and crisp and perfect for burning, but on Sunday we woke up to rain and it rained all day long.
Johnny went out in the rain on Sunday and dug the hole for us. We kept hoping it would stop, but it rained on into the night.
Our plan was to leave around 9:00 or 10:00 Monday morning, but we weren’t on any time schedule. The grandkids had left for school, the car was packed and Dave was out running a last minute errand. Mary Lou and I were there alone and so we gathered up the boxes we had placed everything in and picked up the shovel then headed out back.
Johnny had said he’d dug the hole between dad’s "new/old" garage and mom’s hydrangea tree. When we came upon it, it was a beautiful hole and we both remarked how perfect it was with the squared edges for the boxes to fit into nicely and about two feet deep, big enough to hold it all. I suddenly thought about how Johnny had been out there the day before with all his rain gear on digging this hole for us . . . (bless his heart).
We bent down and placed the boxes into the hole. Our tears were flowing like the rain of the day before and dropping onto the boxes. Mary Lou and I held hands and we each said our words, our blessings, our thanks, our love for our Mother, Father and Brother.
Mary Lou picked up the shovel and placed the first shovelful of dirt on the boxes. She did a few more, then I took my turns.
More, more tears. I felt a remarkably a strong feeling of their presence there with us and of their approval for all we were doing.
We passed the shovel back and forth until all the dirt was gone and then we carefully placed the grass sod back on top and patted it all down.
Done.
postlude: by water, by fire, by earth . . .
Thinking back over the last several weeks, the answers and the direction we took ~~ it all happened and fell into place just as it was supposed to.
I just had a beautiful thought about it all. So many wonderful and miracle-like things happened, but our three closure ceremonies, the spreading of the ashes in the creek, the bonfire, and finally the burial . . . they were closures by water, by fire and by earth. That just never occurred to me until I started writing this post.
On the morning my sister and I left for Florida, we did one more thing together to honor our family and have one final closure of sorts.
As we were going through all the things saved or left behind by our parents and brother, we found many things that were not burnable and things we could not bring ourselves to throw out or give away. My mom had saved every pair of glasses she’d worn since she was a young girl and also the cases she kept them in. Dozens of her scarves, her blue leather wallet with blue rhinestones on it that was her very favorite, things like this that there was just no way we could bring ourselves to throw in the trash. My dad’s bow ties he wore in his younger days, a couple of his wallets, a lighter he used at a time when he smoked, all things so familiar to us. At first we weren’t sure what we were going to do with all this stuff, but we did know we just couldn’t bring ourselves to throw it away. So we started a pile (piles) and hoped that the answer would come to us. And it eventually did.
The plan was that on Saturday night we would have the bonfire and Sunday we were going to dig a hole on the property and bury all the rest of the things. As I mentioned before, Saturday night was cool and crisp and perfect for burning, but on Sunday we woke up to rain and it rained all day long.
Johnny went out in the rain on Sunday and dug the hole for us. We kept hoping it would stop, but it rained on into the night.
Our plan was to leave around 9:00 or 10:00 Monday morning, but we weren’t on any time schedule. The grandkids had left for school, the car was packed and Dave was out running a last minute errand. Mary Lou and I were there alone and so we gathered up the boxes we had placed everything in and picked up the shovel then headed out back.
Johnny had said he’d dug the hole between dad’s "new/old" garage and mom’s hydrangea tree. When we came upon it, it was a beautiful hole and we both remarked how perfect it was with the squared edges for the boxes to fit into nicely and about two feet deep, big enough to hold it all. I suddenly thought about how Johnny had been out there the day before with all his rain gear on digging this hole for us . . . (bless his heart).
We bent down and placed the boxes into the hole. Our tears were flowing like the rain of the day before and dropping onto the boxes. Mary Lou and I held hands and we each said our words, our blessings, our thanks, our love for our Mother, Father and Brother.
Mary Lou picked up the shovel and placed the first shovelful of dirt on the boxes. She did a few more, then I took my turns.
More, more tears. I felt a remarkably a strong feeling of their presence there with us and of their approval for all we were doing.
We passed the shovel back and forth until all the dirt was gone and then we carefully placed the grass sod back on top and patted it all down.
Done.
postlude: by water, by fire, by earth . . .
Thinking back over the last several weeks, the answers and the direction we took ~~ it all happened and fell into place just as it was supposed to.
I just had a beautiful thought about it all. So many wonderful and miracle-like things happened, but our three closure ceremonies, the spreading of the ashes in the creek, the bonfire, and finally the burial . . . they were closures by water, by fire and by earth. That just never occurred to me until I started writing this post.