No Need To Save Me A Seat...

This weekend, we spent a few hours in one of the city’s oldest cemeteries.  We were there because my husband’s band was playing at a music festival, it was a beautiful day and any opportunity for my kids to see their dad at work is a good one.

It is a lovely park and I appreciate the history, but I’ve never really understood the appeal of a bunch of headstones and to me, they represent unnecessary obligations.  When a loved one passes, I just don’t think that an expensive rock and the burden of required visits is any kind of way to remember the person or life they lived.

I know, I know.  So much of the way we deal with death is based in religion, culture, or just tradition.  We do what we do because that’s what we’ve always done and so on.  My own spiritual understanding tells me that a body is merely a vehicle and the person I love is not hanging out in that box underground and they continue to reside in my heart so I can communicate with them any time I need to.  Some of my best relationships are with dead folks.

Likewise, some of the best parties I’ve been to have been funerals.  That’s the way it should be, I think.  Laughter, story-telling, irreverence and love.  Of course, I understand sadness, grief and loss.  That’s real and undeniable.  But it’s also just a tiny little blip on the radar screen of life.  The rest should be about living!

So as I was strolling the grounds with my girls and they were climbing on headstones like they were mountains, with popsicle drippings on their clothes, dancing to the music playing behind us, I thought it was a perfect setting for a festival and, based on some of the sentiments carved on those stones, I bet a lot of those souls would have danced, too, if they weren’t busy someplace else.

That’s what they are, I think.  Busy someplace else.  So why do we keep riding the Grief Train?  Some of us get on the train, ride it to the next station and get off in a new place.  Some of us get on the train and just don’t realize we can get off anytime we choose.  Some of us (and we all know someone like this) actually ENJOY the Grief Train.  They get their tickets stamped over and over again and put it in their scrapbook or pin it to their chest like a badge of honor. 

My father was a boxcar hobo on the train.  His life was full of loss.  He thought he could hop on the train unnoticed and just ride along with nothing more than a handkerchief tied to a stick.  He didn’t seem to notice that he may have slipped on quietly, but he was still a passenger and that the longer he rode along, the more loaded that sack became.  He was still carrying baggage and it became heavier by the day.

Here’s the thing about the Grief Train:  the longer you ride it, the heavier your baggage gets.  And while you’re riding the train, you miss out on the Living and the Life that is zipping past the windows as you speed by.

My dad missed a lot of joy because he forgot to hop off at the next station.  In the end, he was prepared.  When we got the call, all of his children came together and found, next to his chair, a business card for the funeral home and a box with all of his important papers.  He wrapped up all of the business for us in a tidy little bow, so all we had to do was celebrate.

And that’s what we did.  We celebrated.  His life.  The nine of us are living, breathing evidence that his life meant something.  Our talents, our hearts, our sense of what’s right – and many of our flaws – are gifts that he gave us.  That is something to give thanks for, not something to grieve.  Over the next few days, we wrote his story for the paper, we threw a party for him at his fire station, we toasted him with cheap beer at his favorite gas station-slash-dive bar (yes, all one place) and we planned his proper send-off.  The one that he wanted, and that went horribly, hilariously wrong.  Which was perfect.

Always a drifter, he had no use for a rock with his name on it.  He wanted some of his ashes scattered in the Gulf, where he spent the last few decades of his life and some in the Rocky Mountains, where his cowboy heart resided.  The question was – how do we make that happen?  No worries, my brother Ken was there – the inspiration behind our family-coined terms, “kenginuity” and “kengineering”.  Of course, any time there is kengineering, hilarity ensues.  We maybe forgot that part.

Florida on January 1^st had some definite advantages for our mission.  The beaches were empty aside from the occasional snowbird or fisherman, so we had privacy.  We also had high tides and strong winds.  And we had to figure out how to get ashes past the waves so we could release them.

The obvious choice would have been a boat.  But we didn’t have one.  On to plan B.  Plan B involved a basket and a fishing rod.  The idea was to go to the beach of dad’s choice, attach the basket with ashes, cast it out past the waves, and cut the line so it could drift out to the great beyond.  We all loaded in the van, laughing about the plan and how funny Dad would find it when Johnny Cash suddenly began singing through the stereo.  Ha!  We knew he was paying attention!

We didn’t have to stand on the beach very long to realize that we’d never get the ashes out far enough.  On to Plan C.  Plan C took us to a fishing pier, with the basket, a BB gun and a bunch of helium balloons.  The idea, to quote Ken (because I have this on video) was to “Tie him to the balloons, let it float away from the pier, then shoot the balloons and dump the sucker.” 

Back to the van, back to the laughter and more Johnny Cash.  We walked out on the pier, nodded to fisherman wondering what the hell these crazy people with the balloons and the gun were up to, and realized (while balloons were beating us in the face) that there was no way we were ever going to win the battle against the wind.  On to Plan D.  Which wasn’t a plan at all.  We simply reached as far beyond the railing as we could, and dumped the ashes into the wind.  Some of him made it into the water.  Some of him made it into our hair and our nostrils.

Back to the van, back to the laughter, back to the Johnny Cash.  Our imperfect burial at sea couldn’t have been more perfect.  As for the other half of him, he made it to Colorado, but he still sits in a box in Ken’s china cabinet.  His wife likes having him there, and I kind of think it’s a good place for him to be.

I can’t speak for my brothers and sisters, but I know I’m glad that my father’s memory isn’t tied to a rock someplace that doesn’t matter.   I think of this whenever my husband sings “No Headstone On My Grave” (as he did there in that cemetery) because the lyrics ring true. When the wind blows a bit of dust in my eye, I remember his send-off and laugh.  When I said goodbye, I told him I’d look for him in my babies’ eyes and that’s where I visit him.  When one of them yodels, I know he’s there.  When I hear “Silent Night”, I know he’s there.  And when I need to talk to him, I do and I know he’s there.  He’s there because he CAN be, in a way that he just wasn’t physically able to be before.

There, on the pier, with ashes flying in our faces, I heard the deep roar of his laughter behind us and I knew that not only did he approve, but that he finally put down his baggage and got off of that damn train.

There’s no doubt that death is a sad fact of life.  When someone we love is no longer there, there’s an empty space left behind.  But it’s only as empty as we let it be.  I choose to fill the space with memories and love. 

As much as I love to travel, I’m in it for the joy so I will not be needing a seat on the Grief Train.  If you got on the train, I understand that the seats can be comfortable, but don’t forget that you can always get off at the next station and you may be surprised to see how far you’ve come.