Doing Hard Things

Storm's Ashes

Today, I did something hard.  Something really hard.  Something much harder than I thought it would be.  Today, I buried my husband's ashes. 

The little blue can on the left is Storm's ashes.  What's left of them anyway.  The larger box I took to the beach and dumped into the Pacific, a move he would have appreciated.  Something inside of me wanted to hold back this little bit, though.  I wasn't sure why, but I knew it would come to me. 

Fast forward two years and a few months, and I knew what I had to do.  Storm grew me the roses I have.  They were entirely his labor of love.  He planted them, fertilized them, kept them watered, weeded them, and generally made them loved, in his gruff and direct way; much the way he loved me.  Some of them have died in my neglect; a sign of the inside of me, as well, I suppose.   He knew each of their names, what color their blooms were, and exactly how much attention each of them needed.  Now it is the legacy of his love. 

I knew when I bought the place that I was going to turn my front yard into a rose garden to house all of my little lovelies.  One in particular, the one that got him calling me Rose, I wanted to find a special place for.  As I was sitting in a grief group one night, it came to me what I was going to do with that little can of ashes.  I decided I was going to put them underneath of this specific rose, called "Her Favorite" by him.  This particular plant is a clone from the mother plant, carefully tended and loved by him specifically for me.  I was going to bury those ashes underneath of this incredibly beautiful rose plant. 

Tonight, I did that very thing.  I dug a hole, I then dug a smaller hole underneath, and I carefully placed the ashes inside.

I didn't think this was going to be a hard thing to do.  This is the third rose we have put into the ground, and the girls and I are getting rather good at it.  Physically, it wasn't hard.  It was the other kind of hard. 

 As I sat there on the ground, in the dirt of my lovely little home, I realized that I really didn't want to put this little round box down in that hole.  I really didn't want to let go of the last tiny piece of him that I had left.  So I sat there and cried for a while, waiting for the storm (ha ha) to pass. 

I kept thinking I was going to feel better, somehow.  That a sense of completion or perhaps closure would come, but there was only that same familiar pain; the one that started as a piercing scream inside me, and now is more like a continuous sobbing.  I've become so used to it, that I forget that it is there, and yet it reminds me occasionally.  This was one of those occasions.

Eventually, I tucked it down into the little hole I had made for it, and I sat there and cried some more.  I wanted to pray.  I wanted to say something.  Maybe some memorial thing.  But the words wouldn't come, so I just sat there and I cried.  I am so very sick of crying.

Finally, it was his voice in my head; in my heart.  "You've got to get on with it now, my wife, my love.  You're only hurting yourself."  So I scooped some dirt over it.  Enough to cover the box.  Then I went to get the hose.  I went to fill the hole. 

 Then the rose went in, after the girls carefully extracted her from the bucket that was her home all of her life.  I carefully coiled her overgrown roots into the hole, and we closed the dirt down over them both. 

Favorite in her new home - her former bucket home behind her.

At that moment, I would have given anything to have Storm there behind me, his arms around my waist, whispering his love into my ear, asking me if I liked it, telling me how much he needed me, instead of buried in the ground beneath my favorite rose.  I would have given every single rose back for one more minute with him. 

Now I will just call her "Favorite" because there is no need for the "her."  There is no one for the pronoun to matter.  She sits right on the driveway, so each day I will pull out and pull in and see her lovely green leaves, and eventually, her amazing pink blooms that expand and grow and change color each and every day.  She will bask in the sun, and she will receive my love and attention in a way she has not had in 2.5 years.  Every time I look out my dining room window, she will be there, a legacy of our love.  When I build my porch, she will be right at the bottom of the ramp, waiting for me to enjoy her lovely rose offerings each summer.

Panda and I stood over her and watered her...we sang the Aaronic blessing over her in English and Hebrew, and then we left the hose to drip on her all day.  I looked out the window at dinner time, and there she was...looking happy, strangely enough.  Looking ready to grow, ready to recover, ready to plant roots in her first real home.  Let's hope I am ready to do the same. 

Thank you, Yehova, for my roses, for my garden, for my little blue home, and for my daughters here to help me through all of these hard times.  How much harder it would be without all of these blessings.  Thank you for Storm, and his love for me.  Toda raba, Abba.  Toda raba.  May you bring me shalom.