I lost my Dad in the summer of 2003. It was a brutal summer. I lost him, my Grandmother, and my Great Aunt in 3 months’ time. For a long time, his ashes sat in a closet until my Mother passed away in the summer of 2006. I then became responsible for both of them. And I left them both, in their functional but ugly plastic urns, sitting above my washing machine in the garage. I didn’t know what to do.
In the summer of 2007, I heard a voice whispering that it was time. I needed to let them go, no matter how painful it would be.
My family had enjoyed the outdoors long before I came to be. I knew they had never wanted to be interred in the Earth, but no one had ever told me where they wanted to go. This is a huge thing. Let your loved ones know this. It’s an awful burden to those left behind – please put it in your will or final wishes. So, for months, I thought about where I would leave them. My Mother was the easiest.
My entire life, she loved nothing more than the wild Pacific Ocean. She grew up in Oregon, by the coast, and she loved nothing more than wandering a beach the morning after a squall came through, looking for Japanese glass fishing floats.
In my dreams, I saw where to spread her ashes on the Olympic Coastal strip. The Olympic National Park quickly permitted me to do an ocean spread from the beach. All I had to do was email the park, and it was granted.
I walked the beach alone till something caught my eye.
It was a rock in the surf, half buried. When I pulled it out, it looked like her, in an off way. My Mom had a dowager hump on her back, and so did the rock. It felt warm when I picked it up, even though it had been buried in the cold sand. I knew this was where she wanted to be set. For years, the rock went everywhere with me when I hiked. Before she had passed away, my Mom had battled renal failure for seven years. She would often come with me on hikes. Not to hike but for the long car rides into the mountains. She could do her kidney dialysis in the car, using gravity. Those were years that meant the world to me. And I wanted to keep taking her, free of her pain.
My Dad, though, was a hard one. But one day, it came to me. He grew up in a small town on the Eastern side of Montana, only known due to the train tracks going by it, that followed I-90 across the country. He was born in the Great Depression on a cattle ranch that was lost and regained multiple times. It was a very hard life my Dad lived. My Dad had a sister and a brother, who passed away at six months from what now would have been an hour of surgery to save his heart in modern times. His Dad and he lived in a tiny trailer and often traveled around, living off the land. They hunted and fished in Glacier National Park and the Forest Service lands all around the area. My Grandfather didn’t much care for the game wardens and tax revenuers. They lived like it was 1855, not 1955. He was surviving as they always had, even with the depression long over for most of the country.
Kirk and I drove to Montana at the end of the summer of 2007. And drive we did. I felt Glacier National Park was where to go, and we ended up in the section near North Fork Flathead River. Even though a forest fire had burned it a year before, it called to me. I would sit and listen to the wind tell me my Father had walked here once. It’s a big National Park, over a million acres big.
You might not agree that the wind talks, but maybe you just haven’t let your mind go still long enough.
I stood there and imagined what it looked like when my Dad was young. What had he seen?
I was wandering a trail there. It was so quiet here, and no one else was around. Except for a nosy ranger who we watched drive up to the trailhead and then wait for us to return…so she could ask, “Why were we out here?”. Very odd behavior indeed; only once before had I been questioned why I was on a trail (you’d think that was obvious, right? Apparently hiking is suspicious if you are near the Canadian border, the other time it was Border/Homeland Security questioning me in the North Cascades). It was odd; I felt my Dad’s spirit beside me, urging me to be snarky to them. I always feel that urge when the government questions why you are on open public land; it is none of their business why you are there.
Thank you Dad for giving me that gift!
Driving the dirt road towards Polebridge (and Canada), we followed the North Fork of the Flathead River. I could hear the whisper strongly, and that is where we stopped.
I climbed down to the water’s edge and knew this was it.
In Montana, at the time, it was legal to spread ashes on the water without a permit. I had tried to be legal and requested a permit for Glacier National Park. No one would reply to me, and even in person, the ranger was uncomfortable and claimed they “didn’t do that.” (for dispersing in the park, on land), even though it was something they should have permitted So I knew it had to be a waterway. People get weird about death and ashes, and I recognize that fully.
I could almost see my Dad fishing here, with no fear of a ranger finding them, so long ago. As I walked along the river, I could almost see him here, sitting in the sun with his Dad.
My Dad had often talked about how much he missed Montana. He never went back after coming to Washington State. He would talk so much, though.
As I cut the seal open on his urn and let him go, I felt I had chosen well. He was home finally. As his ashes floated down the river, I felt all my anxiety leave my body.
They were both finally at rest. Not every couple is meant to stay together for eternity; for them, they needed to go where their souls were at peace.
Since then, I have not felt my Dad walk beside me. He went where he needed, finally happy in his youth. My Mom, for a few years I felt her alongside me at scenic views.
The last time I had her stone with me, she felt faint. She was letting me go. She knew I was in a good place and didn’t need her so badly. This saddened me even more, but I knew it was time.
Tell your children or loved ones where you want to go. Don’t leave it to them to decide. Otherwise, you might sit for eternity on a shelf. And your spirit aching to be free.
~Sarah