The Last Word On Nothing

She was in the narrow shed, on a high shelf, in a cardboard box advertising Dole fresh cut salads on the side. In black Sharpie on top, the word “Judi” in my stepdad’s scrawl gave away the actual contents.

“It’s time to get Mom out of the storage facility,” I told him during a recent visit to Santa Fe. Previously, Mom’s ashes were displayed in his kitchen in a fancy green-flowered ceramic urn (which was once owned by Madeline Albright, a gift from a foreign visitor, apparently, that she wasn’t allowed to keep). But when he moved in with a new partner, it just seemed wrong to have his deceased wife on display, no matter how grand the container. Thus, the urn went into the cardboard box (packed inside a purple velvet case first—we’re not barbarians!) in the shed.

When I say “shed” I mean, yep, one of those storage units you pay monthly for, to stash old bikes and broken stereos and golf clubs and other stuff you’ll probably give or throw away later (or your kids will). Mom shared the unit with some dusty boxes of files and mementos, wooden slats from a shelving unit, a huge frame. Some other stuff was stacked in there; nothing of major consequence. Too, there was an old empty Coke can on the floor in the corner and some mouse droppings here and there. It was an A1 storage place, if you’re wondering.

Once unlocked, the accordion door to Unit 91 made a horrible shrieking sound when we pulled it up. We got the box of Mom down and brought her with us in the car. The urn held not just mom but the ashes of three pets (including her very favorite black-and-gray tiger cat, April, and weimaraner Gretel). Plus, my grandmother, it turns out! Back at the condo, in the kitchen, we lifted the urn out and unscrewed the top just to see what we were working with. No surprise, it was a series of nondescript plastic bags of ash. One wasn’t sealed quite well enough to keep from spewing just a little gray stuff from the top when we moved it around. That was weird.

The plan was to take that bag of Mom and her pets and her mother either up the mountain to among the stands of aspen trees, or over to the Botanical Gardens. Mom died in 2006 and it was long past time to spread her ashes somewhere pretty. She loved Santa Fe in all its Santa Fe glory and probably would have liked to be scattered in the main square (near where the Native Americans sell jewelry) or inside one of her favorite shops, perhaps in a dressing room. (For the record, before she was cremated, we tucked her CHICOS customer card into the coffin with her.)

But those were both terrible ideas. Especially that second one. And the Botanic Gardens, well, people might not want us doing it there, where they walk and inhale a lot. So out of town, up where the wild things grow, it would be.

Would I feel unmoored once her ashes were in the wind? Would it matter that she wasn’t all in one place, and that I didn’t have a special spot to visit in a cemetery where I’d feel her presence? I wasn’t sure. I certainly didn’t THINK so. I’m of the “back to the Earth” mindset when it comes to death. I don’t like the idea of burial, unless you intend to be unboxed tree and worm food. I’m a bit claustrophobic myself. So, this should feel good and right, to let Mom out of her confines to fly free under the Santa Fe sun.

And so that’s what we did. Up the mountain we drove, toward fragrant pines and that glorious stand of aspens, and we parked where the hikers and picnickers park, and we took the plastic bags on a short walk to a spot with a nice view of one mountain elbowing another to move over. It was pretty dry up there, not as colorful as I’d hoped, but it was warm, and Mom loved to be warm. When she was dying, the heating blanket was always around her, usually on the medium setting at least. (I had to get rid of that thing later; I just couldn’t look at it anymore. You may know how that is.)

When you picture releasing a loved one back into nature, you envision a moment with a perfect breeze blowing (away from you, please) and the ash taking to the air and swirling away, sparkling in the sun. This was more like emptying out a clogged vacuum cleaner into a pile in the grass, sad to say. Honestly, Mom would have loved the absurdity of it. There wasn’t a lot of graceful movement, and not a blip of wind. Grandma’s dust clump went next to mom’s…a few feet over. I didn’t think a full mingle would have been appreciated (their relationship was complicated), but I wanted them to be able to chat at low volume about this and that, if they chose to. (The pets and Mom went together, of course.)

We sat for a few minutes, talking about Mom things she did, and I plucked a few weedy flowers and placed them on the ashes, and hummed a little You Are My Sunshine, and took a picture. We ended up taking a few photos—of the ashes, of my stepdad sitting on a rock, of me sitting on a rock. We weren’t sure it was appropriate, but it seemed necessary to mark the moment.

And then we left. And went out for lunch, because it was lunch time.

Here’s the thing: I’m just not sure what to do with that whole experience. I think we waited too long, and it fell a little flat. If we’d done it soon after she died, we would have been crying a lot, and we might have sat there longer after. Other family or friends might have gone with us to participate. Lunch would have been a sad celebration instead of a necessity. But it’s what we did, oh so many years after the fact. And I’ll tell you this: I’m glad she’s where she is now, finally. Because in life, Mom was not someone you could leave up on a shelf, unnoticed and gathering dust. She was sun and rain, the breeze and the aspens and the pines, the prettiest of birds. It’s right and good that she’s now feeding the wildflower seeds for next year. Maybe I’ll go visit that spot when they bloom.

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Photo by Oliver Hihn, downloaded from Unsplash