After her dad died, he was cremated and his ashes put in an urn. There was no funeral, just a small family gathering at his home in Iowa, overlooking the meadow on the property where he’d spent half his life. They sat in a circle and shared Dad stories, heading to the cemetery afterward to put the urn in the family plot. A minister said a few words, asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to put the urn in the ground. You’ll have to lie all the way down on the ground to do it because it’s a pretty deep hole, he said. No one volunteered, but it wasn’t a long beat before she found herself saying she’d do it. It felt like her task to do. She lay right down in front of the hole, took the urn with both hands, put it down in there and said I love you and Goodbye.
Sometimes now she wishes she could put her marriage in the ground and just say I loved you and Goodbye. But she doesn’t want to bury it if it’s still alive.