Everybody wants to go to heaven...

Last time I posted, I posted over a month ago and I was all eager to come up with some profound entry about my experience with being a girlfriend for a year. I wanted to rant about the lack of art making. There was a lot I wanted to write about. But a lot of OTHER things happen as a month suddenly passes.

Like getting into a fender-bender that's left me car-less. I learned a few important things from this experience:
1. Scott's protection and defense on my behalf is fierce. I'm glad I have a man like this in my corner.
2. Losing your car feels like a rock sitting on your chest for a day or two afterward.
3. A Dodge Shadow is no match for an Acura SUV.
4. Asking for rides is humbling in more ways than one.


Besides this I had recently finished David Crowder and Mike Hogan's book, Everybody Wants to go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die (or the eschatology of bluegrass). I needed a book like this. Some of what David and Mike share is tongue-in-cheek or makes me laugh out loud, some makes me comtemplative, and other things is somber. There are a few points at which I could feel the weight that David and Mike felt when recounting their grief over the passing of their pastor; I can totally relate to what it feels like.

It's a book about Bluegrass, the Soul, and Death. (I can't say I have gained a particular invested interest in bluegrass or the history thereof, but it was interesting in a passer-by sort of way)
Finishing the book came at an interest time because I heard a lot about a lot of deaths at the time. Whether family of friends, or crime-related circumstances, it would seem that the subject of death was hard to escape. ... Perhaps I was more aware, and continue to be more aware, because of reading the book. Whatever the case, the point of the book was not to drag you down into this dark hole of mortality. It was uplifting, which suited the authors' point: death is not the end. Death does not win.

I need to hear this and be reminded of it once in a while. Reading a book without first having a clear idea of what it is going to be about can be dangerous. Scandalous, perhaps, because you have no idea what you're investing yourself into. But it's quickly revealed that the book is about death, and it was approached in such a way that I was hooked like a fish. Why do I say it can be dangerous? The risk over reading a book about death -- for me -- means that I have to face some waters I've avoided for a very, very long time.

My mother died when I was 17. I can remember with distinction the sound of my father coming up the steps and towards the door of my bedroom. I was seized with having a feeling I knew what was going to be told to me. As though bracing for the blow. Certainly, the blow came as my dad came near my bedside and told me that mom had died. It felt like I had a ball of curdled milk in my stomach. I don't recall how I cried, I just remember my face buried into my father's chest for a long time. I don't remember stopping. I don't remember my dad leaving but I know he did shortly afterward. I don't remember falling asleep... somehow I did. I woke up that morning and didn't want to move.
I'd been avoiding my mother's death for a very long time. I don't mean to say that I never talked about it. I also don't mean to say that I hadn't been torn up inside every time someone would talk about their mom and growing up ... this was the case for several years, and the notion didn't pass until halfway through college. What I mean is that we were sent her ashes some years ago.

I still have them. If I could avoid touching the box, I would. It weirded me out, to look at a box and think "That's my mom in there."
When Cheryl and dad moved out to Nevada, I had to take the box with me. I felt like I needed to do something with the ashes, like WE needed to do something with the ashes, but I was assured that I shouldn't do anything about it until I'm OK with the ashes when it wouldn't weird me out. During the same week I decided that I wanted to spread her ashes in Paulo Duro Canyon, about an hour outside of where we used to live in Texas. I don't know when we'll get to do this. I just wish the weight of what should be done with the ashes was passed off of my brother and father and onto me.

The box had been sitting in my bedroom in the open for a while since the move. Every time I would look at it, I would think, "There's mom....................."

Then something extraordinary happened.
In the Crowder and Hogan book, they recount their experience of going to the funeral. Going to the viewing. In talking about the deceased's body, it is proclaimed that although it might have a resemblance of their friend, it wasn't. It was something else.

I glanced up from the page and looked over at the box with my mother's ashes. I realized something... those ashes? that's not mom. Technically all the physical components were, but it wasn't mom. Mom was more than flesh and blood, but spirit and personality. There was more to her than anything that could be shoved into a box. Recently, I'd been going through some boxes and trying to clear some clutter in my bedroom and I came to the ashes. I held the box in my lap a while, a white mailing box with our address back in Allentown. For perhaps the second time ever, I actually opened the mailing box to expose the sleek plastic box it held. The first time I did this was several years ago and it felt like caterpillars were eating my stomach. This time, the caterpillars weren't there. I was still ill at ease, but in the sense that you're unsure of what to expect of yourself as you follow through with a discovery.

The rest is between me, the box, and God. Now the ashes are back in the mailing box and sitting in a storage space in my room. I still want to take it to Paulo Duro Canyon. I still miss mom... but it's good to know that I've made peace with something I was afraid of.