My mortality seems like something closer to me these days as more people I know have passed into their next great adventure. A Facebook post just came through about another death in my high school graduating class—almost 30% gone now.
I marvel at how the years flew by and enabled me to reach this vulnerable, and hopefully venerable, age. I am not obsessed with what the future might hold, but I am thinking about getting my affairs in order so that my demise is easier for others to handle.
I am thinking about where my physical body will rest when my soul passes. I want to be cremated, and the ashes settled in locations that are most meaningful to me. My parents are an example with their desire to have a granite marker in the cemetery near their home. They also wanted part of their co-mingled ashes scattered over the family farm. I have been thinking about special sites in my life.
I would like a small headstone near my parents with some ashes buried there. I lived in Coggon, Iowa for the formative years of my life. I recognize more acutely each day how profound my parents were in shaping the values that I hold dear. A statement on that headstone in addition to my name and birth/death dates might be, “She loved the cornfields and the Ponderosa Pines.”
My Iowa roots are attached strongly to the influence on my life of the youth organization 4-H. I had long wanted some ashes spread at the 4-H Camping Center, which unfortunately no longer exists. I am still considering how I might honor that Midwestern past along with what I learned about raising sheep and being a somewhat competent homemaker.
The pines epitomize the most important “place” for me in the Rocky Mountains and specifically Rocky Mountain National Park. I speak with people frequently about securing permits to scatter ashes in the park. I recognize how meaningful this landscape is to thousands of individuals who have visited and inhabited this area for years.
Scattering my ashes in the park means choosing a specific place. Special to me is Twin Sisters Mountain. It was the first mountain I hiked in the park over a half century ago. In the ensuing years, I have relished that hike dozens of times. The views from the top are to the continental divide and Longs Peak in the west and the front range and plains to the east. This vista represents my love for open spaces that includes mountains as well as prairies.
I hope that I have friends or family members willing and able to make the hike to the top of Twin Sisters. If not, I would be happy to have the ashes scattered at Sheep Lakes where I have mixed my love for mountain landscapes with sheep of all kinds including the domestic ones I raised in 4-H as well as the Bighorns.
I enjoy my musings about where I will rest in peace. In the meantime, I appreciate these special spaces while I am still alive.
Karla,
I hear you. I am going through similar thought processes. I’m thinking of scattering my ashes in a trout stream somewhere in the High Sierra. Maybe there is a message in Adam’s new interest in backpacking. He and Andy will likely have to do the honors. Now that I think of it, the Sun River in the Bob Marshall Wilderness is also a possibility. Maybe Leo can pack my ashes in on horseback. Also, regarding your parents passing on certain values to you, I am sure I can say the same of my parents. Indeed, someday I will have to tell you about the first story I wrote for a Freshman composition class at Michigan. I truly believe that story laid out my future path in life–at least the writing part of it.