A Unique Journey

My mother’s ashes sat in a plastic bag, in a plastic box, on a closet shelf in her brother’s townhouse for a couple years.  Not exactly the dignified end she anticipated when she passed away in 2001.   We had to return the rented urn after the funeral and plastic is what they gave us in its place.  My aunt, who meant well, never did get a chance to spread them on one of her business trips to Minnesota, where my mom was born, so it didn’t look like mom was going to get back there in the end after all.   With my aunt now creeped out about hanging on to the ashes so long, I said I would take them and dispose of them, not having a clue what to do with them.  I figured I’d just wing it.  I reassured my aunt and uncle that I had some sense of decorum, even though everybody in church panicked when I got up to do the eulogy at her funeral years ago. 

            The fourth of July found my husband, young son and I camping next to the pristine Au Sable River in northern Michigan at PaddleBrave Campground.  We had packed in a hurry to rush up north in bumper-to-bumper traffic, at 70 miles an hour, so we could relax.  We set up camp (28’ travel trailer, electricity, A/C, shower, microwave – just the basics) and drove a little over a mile to my in-law’s cottage to go out on the family pontoon boat.   The plan was to go out for the day, relax, get some sun (in my case, shade) and then later that night, go back out on the boat for the fireworks, when we would cast my mother’s ashes overboard, ceremoniously and solemnly of course, into Higgins Lake.   Fireworks, the glow of the moon, my husband’s family all around – it would be perfect.  Everyone was onboard with the idea.

            After having spent all day on the boat and in the water, we headed back to the family cottage for a steak BBQ after which lethargy quickly set in.  We were all near comatose.  Viewing the fireworks from the boat no longer sounded interesting to the group, so the plan for my mother’s ashes went down the drain.   I was going to have to think of something else.

            Our son, Patrick, who was only five at the time, was still breaking in my husband and I at this parenting gig as it changes all the time.  Neither one of us realized that last year’s bathing suit and swimming shoes wouldn’t even come close to fitting him this summer.   Once it dawned on us that he either wouldn’t be able to swim (John’s suggestion) or he had to swim naked (my suggestion but Patrick vehemently objected to both), John ran into town with him to get a new suit.   I decided to wait for them in my hammock that was roped between two trees on our campsite and practice relaxing.

As I gently swung and read in the shade, it suddenly dawned on me that I could dispose of my mother’s ashes in the Au Sable River, which was about 50 feet away across the small camp dirt road next to our campsite.  I grabbed my mom and walked over to the small boardwalk that ran parallel to the river.  The current was rather swift that day, and went from left to right rapidly.  I figured I better walk as far to the right as the boardwalk went so the ashes would not spread all over the front of the property where people were getting in and out of canoes, tubes, and kayaks.   I knelt down at the far end of the boardwalk during a lull in the people traffic and said a prayer for my mom and an apology for not getting her back to Minnesota.  I opened up the plastic bag, took off the twisty and dumped a little bit of her into the river, as a test pour.   She clouded up the river quickly in a two-foot area and I panicked, figuring I better do this all at once and very quick, or it’s going to be a pretty big mess, so I upended the plastic bag.  All the ashes heavily plopped into the river with a splash, which shot some river water straight back up in the air ending up on my face and arms.   The river immediately clouded up again but luckily the swift flowing current took the cloud downstream.  When the cloud cleared, I saw a miniature mountain of ashes on the riverbed.  There was my mother.  Stuck in a pile on the floor of the Au Sable River.  I wasn’t sure what to do at this point, so I took the bag back to the campsite and sat back down in the hammock to think. 

            While I was wondering about my next brilliant move, my son and husband came back from the store.  Patrick ran into the trailer to get dressed for swimming, and I let my born/raised Catholic husband in on my little dilemma.  His eyes bugged out of his head and he sputtered incoherently but I understood his drift.  However, at that time, Patrick came out of the trailer looking like a tiny clown from the rodeo.   Now my eyes bugged out of my head.  He had on a white short-sleeved tee-shirt with a cowboy-hat happy face saying “Howdy, Pardner!” with navy blue swimming trunks four sizes too big decorated with chartreuse daisies all over them.  On his feet were swimming shoes, also four sizes too big.   I looked at my husband as if to say, “What the . . .?”   John responded that he was prepared for the next couple of years now. 

            Patrick was so excited to get into the water that I let the wardrobe issue go for now, but I had to spot him crossing the small camp road so he wouldn’t trip in his clown shoes, I mean, his swimming shoes.   All three of us went to the boardwalk and Patrick jumped into the water, which was just about up to the top of his short chubby thighs.  

            I instantly had an idea of how to fix the problem of my mother on the bottom of the river.   I walked downstream on the boardwalk, and called to Patrick to follow me.   He waded through the water towards me as I neared the end of the walk.   I showed him a small mountain on the riverbed and asked him to just kind of dance around and shuffle his big floppy feet and stir it all up.  Like a good son, he took those big clown shoes and shuffled and moved and kicked and just mixed everything all up for me. 

            As he was doing this, the water got all cloudy again, and he asked me, “What am I doing, Mema?   Am I feeding the fishes?”  

            “Yes, son, you are.  And they’re really hungry.”  

            And my mother floated, at long last, down the river.   I don’t know about her, but I was finally at peace.  Now I had to figure out how to break this to her family.