I am home and so are my parents.
I took their ashes back to Chicago.
My whole family plus some friends were there.....to say good-bye.
I hope I did the right things.
I hope my parents would be pleased.
The containers, the ashes....they didn't give me any signals so all I could do is create something that the survivors, the people who knew and loved them, would feel good about.
In a couple of months.....I will head back one more time to Chicago and check their headstones and carvings.
In the Lithuanian cemetery, where my father is buried, I will plant some Hostas and day lilies. Hostas my dad dug up from his own garden and transported down here to the south. Hostas that will now make the return journey back north to stay with him.
My mother's austere cemetery won't allow plantings or flowers.....so I will only bring shears to cute the grass away from her family's headstones.....and a small stone to lay on the granite so she knows I was there.
On the drive back south, I wondered if I should have kept my parents' ashes with me.....as I already felt an emptiness....a lack of them....as I headed back home. But Chicago is where they lived and loved and made their life so I guessed that would be the best place for them.
Still....today....I wondered.....the house ...my house is filled with their stuff but not them....and I'm not completely sure that is right.
Startled to see a deer and fawn so close to us....it was a very unambiguous message though.
