Father and Son’s Ashes Scattered Together

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I give Troy the bur­gundy vel­vet bag that con­tains Erik’s ashes. “Do you mind hold­ing them? I may need to run down to the beach by myself.”

“I’ll put them in my back pack.” Troy rests the gray sack by his feet and slides the ashes in. He starts to zip up the back­pack, but pauses. “Jeanette, I might be able to fit yours in, too.”

Jeanette hugs her pine box closer to her chest. “No, I want to hold him. Hayden’s fine right here.”

My mother-in-law, Jeanette, has held on to her husband’s ashes for 17 years now.

When we talked about scat­ter­ing Erik’s ashes, she said, “We’ll scat­ter them together. It’s never felt right to do it before, but it feels right now. Erik can be with his daddy. They can finally be together.”

And now Jeanette’s eyes are glossy with the tears she has been unwill­ing to release for decades.

I think of my pain—this pain from los­ing Erik—and know it can­not com­pare to hers. Two hus­bands and her youngest son, all dead. If a heart is bro­ken into pieces, how can she have any­thing left?

Jeanette has never been to ther­apy, never gone to spousal loss sup­port, never been will­ing to talk about her losses. Maybe she thinks some things are inex­press­ible. I imag­ine all of that grief stuck in her body, crawl­ing through her limbs like a poi­so­nous snake, and I want to reach inside of her and pull it out.

I look at her and vow, to myself, that I will deal with my pain. I will take hold of my sad­ness, wres­tle it if I have to, let­ting its wild head hiss at me, so that I can come out on the other side more capa­ble of being an exam­ple for my baby girls.

I do not want to be bro­ken into pieces. I want to be bro­ken open. I want to find love again.

“It’s a two mile hike, you know,” I tell Jeanette.

“Don’t you worry about me, sweet­heart. I’ll be fine.” She nods down at Hayden’s box. “It’s not like he weighs very much.”

We all begin to walk.

Jen says, “I brought hot tea for after­ward. Gonna be even colder by the water.”

“That was thought­ful of you,” I say, but I don’t really care about hot tea. I don’t care about any­thing other than mak­ing sense out of things. But, how do I make sense out of Erik’s death? Out of the fact that I am here to scat­ter his ashes? How? Why?

The pres­sure in my chest is unbearable–a grief-filled ham­mer repeat­edly pound­ing against my ribcage.

There is so much to fig­ure out. Do I stay in Cal­i­for­nia, amongst my mem­o­ries of Erik, or do I move back to Florida to be closer to my family?

Every­one has an opin­ion, but I need to silence their words. Silence every­thing. I need quiet so that I can let the answers come to me, but I am afraid. Afraid of trust­ing myself. Afraid of mess­ing up Tatiana and Keira. How can I be a good mother when I feel too dam­aged to take care of myself?

Erik would know what to do. Erik could fix any­thing. He had a way of hold­ing me, of com­fort­ing me, of tak­ing care of me, and now, now there is no Erik. Now I must do this with­out him.

I do not want to feel the claw­ing of my emo­tions, so I quicken my pace into a slow run.

I run ahead of Troy, Jen, and Jeanette at Ten­nessee Val­ley, my feet pound­ing out aggres­sion on the orange dirt trail. I turn back to them, for a brief moment, and yell, “I’ll meet you there.”

Troy shouts, “We’ll see you soon.”

“Do your thing, girl,” Jen says.

Jeanette says noth­ing, but I know she under­stands the feel­ing of need­ing to be alone.

Run­ning is my way of cop­ing, a form of med­i­ta­tion with­out sit­ting still. Sit­ting still means feel­ing the entirety of my emo­tions and that I am not ready to do. So I run and move my body to shed the angst. With­out exer­cise, I want to rip off my skin.

Not even three weeks after my c-section with Keira, I started doing this hilly two-mile run again. My five-inch inci­sion was red, but with­out stitches—the heal­ing show­ing signs, but not nearly there. Throb­bing pain and all, I had to push my way, ever so slowly, through the val­ley and down to the beach.

And, now, Keira is two months-old and my pace has quick­ened. My body is get­ting stronger from run­ning, from lift­ing weights with a trainer, from lift­ing babies. I am deter­mined to get health­ier every­day and, already, want to rid my body of its excess baby weight so that I may attract men.

But, who will want me? Who, at the age of 29, wants a woman with two babies? I feel inse­cure. Fat. Ugly. Unwor­thy. Erik is not here to tell me I am beau­ti­ful. Erik is not here to say that I am an amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­pher or the best mother in the world.

This was not the plan. This was not the way things were sup­posed to be.

Or maybe it is the way things are sup­posed to be.

Maybe I have some­how man­i­fested it all.

I look back at the trail. I am alone, run­ning, and no one is in sight.

I need you, Erik. Help me find my way.

The wind tosses my hair in all direc­tions, slap­ping the brown strands against the front of my neck. Every few strides, I stoop down to scoop up rocks, and slip them into my waist pack.

This is where it all started. Ten­nessee Valley.

The day after Erik and I moved from Florida to Cal­i­for­nia, we vis­ited Ten­nessee Val­ley, and I was imme­di­ately filled up with the power of a uni­ver­sal force that I had never expe­ri­enced before.

I will never for­get that first time I spread my arms out to the pow­er­ful Pacific Ocean. Such a sense of clar­ity and eupho­ria. My soul was con­sumed by a spirit much greater than mine, and I felt, with­out a doubt, that my life had deeper purpose.

Never could I have imag­ined then that Erik’s death would be a part of this uni­ver­sal plan. That I would be here, just eight years later, ask­ing the Ocean for answers to such unfath­omable questions.

Today, Ten­nessee Val­ley is veiled by thick fog. There is no sun shin­ing on my face.

On my way up the moun­tain­side, I want know why. Why did this hap­pen to me? To us? To Erik? He was so happy and had it all taken away. Why?

I bend down to pick yel­low and pur­ple wild­flow­ers. Flow­ers for my Erik. This is one time, I am cer­tain, I will be for­given for tak­ing from the earth.

Drops of sweat slide down my neck, into the crease between my breasts. The sounds of ten-foot waves slam against pro­trud­ing boulders.

I hike up to the old army bunker in the side of the hill that I have vis­ited many times before. It is dark in the cement bunker and there are no peo­ple around, but I assume it is safe, as I nor­mally do, and decide to step in.

Pathetic streams of foggy day­light illu­mi­nate the graffiti-like words that have been writ­ten in chalk, crayon, and lip­stick on the gray walls. I walk to the cor­ner, where my favorite words are writ­ten in red, and squint to read them.