On Tuesday morning I put on the prettiest dress I could find and drove to the funeral home. A man standing out front wearing a suit and mask asked me if I was there for the service.
No, I told him. I’m here to pick someone up. Inside a woman in a mask handed me a white paper bag with a white cardboard box and six crisp white envelopes. A Certificate of Cremation and five Certificates of Death. The same funeral home had told me earlier in the week that to take my Dad out of state I’d need special documentation. I’d noted that fact in my journal.
The bag was much heavier than I’d expected. I clasped it to my chest and carried it like a baby, sobs rising and heaving in my throat. I had to sit in my car in the parking lot for a long time before I felt ready to make the drive home.
I’d watched my father die three days before. I’d held his hands, wiped his brow, sung him songs, told him how much I loved him, how much everyone loved him, and that it was OK to go. That he’d lived a big, wide open and beautiful life and that his work here was done. It was the most privileged and holy and devastating task I’ve ever carried out as a daughter. The steepest mountain we’ve climbed together.That night I stayed up as late as I could because that morning I’d still had a Dad.
My step-brother carved a beautiful chestnut box to hold my father’s ashes. It sits on my altar by the fireplace between candles and flowers and incense and other sacred things. In the fall we’ll make some pies and carry him up the mountain in the Blue Ridge near the Shenandoah Valley where he was born, that I was named after, where we camped throughout my childhood, where he carved me bows and arrows, where his heart returned again and again. We’ll scatter his ashes among the trees and rocks and blueberry bushes on the land he loved so much, on the land where he’d started to build a home, a home where he thought he’d live forever. We’ll help him complete his journey of the flesh while he’s on a vast and eternal journey of Spirit. And we won’t even have to leave this state.