Forty days

When the ashes were returned, I didn’t know where to put them.

I’d delayed delivery, thinking to coordinate it with the death certificate, expected soon by the funeral director.  In truth, I felt a little spooked by the thought of the ashes. However, as the days passed with no word, I became aware of a sense of urgency – Ken wanted to come home.

I made the call and felt better immediately.

The simple, decorative cylinder was taller than envisaged. Coffee tables looked overbalanced when I placed it first on one, then another.

I dithered for a couple of days before noticing what we called ‘Ken’s hutch’. An open shelf just inside the entrance door from the garage, the space was where he hung his car keys and cap, stowed his wallet and recent mail, a torch and some carefully selected screwdrivers for emergencies. Blu-tacked over the back wall was a collage of photographs Ken had chosen of everyone close to his heart.

After I’d cleared it out, the space looked forlorn, despite the warmth of the photo gallery. I experimented with vases, bowls and candles but it still felt cold.

 I tried placing the cylinder there – yes, the scale worked.

Then I remembered the jigsaw puzzles stored upstairs from the days we gathered around the table with our grandsons. A couple of puzzles were a challenging 1000 pieces, the last we’d tackled together. Ken and I loved the intricate artwork on the boxes – an inventor’s garage, inside a beach hut, a cruise ship. I’d passed some puzzles on; now I wished I’d kept more.

As soon as I’d piled the boxes in the space, it looked right. A tiny oil lamp from Ken’s childhood provides the thought of light; occasionally I add candles, or a single flower. I hear Ken’s voice, keep it simple.

Today, it is forty days since he died.

In that time, I’ve had many practical tasks to distract me from grieving. Creating this space for him in our home calls to me each time I walk past it, inviting me to feel my loss, and extending comfort.

Comfort too comes from these lines by Mary Oliver in her poem “In Blackwater Woods” –

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

From American Primitive ©Back Bay Books, 1983.