Dust to Dust

Babes, Remember the bracelets we bought in Aruba, well mine broke today. I had just finished teaching a class and someone was asking me about a bind and as I was finishing up with her I felt it start to slip from my wrist. I caught it in my other hand and just stared at it. I have thought about cutting that gross old thing off so many times. We had even debated if we would keep them or cut them off for the wedding. You thought no but I thought maybe yes. We had made a deal that when they fell off we would have to go on another out of country trip right away and start again with a new one. Colin took his off or it”broke” right when we got home but you and I we kept ours. You kept yours forever. I noticed you still had it when I last saw you. Your soul was no longer in your body and I was so fucking freaked out being in that little room with your cold body. I had never seen a person like that before and was unprepared. My Dad had seen you first and told me it would be ok, that you looked ok. You looked like you but not. I almost expected you to open your eyes and make some big joke. I felt as though I was bracing myself for you to scare the shit out of me by sitting up and grabbing me, and yet at the same time bracing for the monumental heartbreak knowing that you were not ever going to open your eyes again. Slowly I’ve let go of our stuff. First the stuff in our house, your things. Your clothes, your sporting equipment, dismantling your office. Your company, and our things. Most anything we had shared I over time, over a few moves, slowly have parted with. There are really so few things I have kept, our wedding rings, your cologne, the teddy bear I gave you in high school that I still sometimes sleep with to this day, your ashes and this bracelet. It fell off my wrist and my wrist felt bare. I looked down and as it fell into my other hand I saw the word gratitude on a bracelet I had just gotten for being a teacher at the Okanagan Yoga Festival. The mixture of emotions is honestly confusing. Immense gratitude for the life I have now, for the life I had with you, God am I ever grateful for both,  mixing with deep sorrow. Like this void is there and no matter what else comes my way or how life moves me on, that void...

I scattered your ashes this trip home. You will be much happier there than in cold Alberta. You are now resting in your favorite place. I had thought through how to do it over and over again. But in the end, it was just me and you. I knew it was right and it was ok. But when I got back out here and walked into my bedroom where your urn had been sitting on a shelf along with a half-empty bottle of your cologne just as you had left it, and my old set of keys from our life, it felt bare. I felt empty. The breaking of that old tattered bracket felt the same. It was old and gross, it was way past due to come off and yet it hung on. Over four years, more time on my write without you than with, it was there as a little reminder. Now so many of those are gone, many on purpose and some just through the passage of time.

I know it sounds crazy but it felt like you letting go of me. Like I scattered your ashes two weeks ago but you hung on a little longer and then today at 11:35 am you let me go. Rene, I know I don’t talk to you as much, and maybe don’t listen for you as much either, but know I love you just as I ever did.

~with love

Dust to Dust 

It was a quiet moment, just me and you. It was just us two. I had thought about how it ought to be done, and who ought to be there but in the end just I and you. I said goodbye to what was left of your body. I talked with you, I buried your ashes under a tree. Just you and me. I cried as I lay you in the ground My heart broke anew It's a pain I've felt many times now. For three years I have been unweaving my grip on you, this just another round. Babes, this is where your body will be laid to rest this is where your ashes are but you... You are onto something new. We mourn you, but I believe you are just fine. Onto the next round. You are playing your next game. My sweet Rene, today I buried your ashes under the tree at a place you loved more than most. In the end, you did get a home on the golf course. Loving always