Taking a deep breath

Edna – Mummy – would have been 87 today, and going out into the garden first thing, I knew there was something I just had to do.  After her funeral, four years ago, we didn’t linger, but came straight home and left the delightful funeral director, Gary, to take care of the remains of her cremation.  The understanding was that at some point, we’d collect them from his office on Beverley Road and bring them back here, to put in the garden somewhere.  He’d made the thoughtful suggestion of placing Gordon’s remains in with her too, so there was just one single parcel there on his shelf which I needed to deal with at some point.

Well, the months roll by, as they do, and finding myself in Hull last Autumn, I decided to take the next step and bring them home with me.  I called in to see Gary who knew immediately why I was there and who handed over a black carrier bag containing what looked like a plastic sweet jar.  One more last step, I thought, and carefully put them on one side when I arrived home, trying to work out what to do next.  With builders in and around the house, with the dreadful winter weather setting in, I didn’t feel that it was quite the right time to be out there in the garden and so the months rolled by again.  I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to make some kind of ceremony of it all, couldn’t decide how to manage the whole business; this very last step of all.

So I didn’t.

Going into the garden this morning, her birthday, I knew the time had come.  I had bought a couple of white roses last week to plant in the flower bed by the pond.  I hadn’t bought them with anything in mind but to fill the gap left by some plants which hadn’t survived the winter; the gap in the border where we often sit looking over the valley and where I had thought would be the best place to put those remains.  I stood for a while, trying to think of a reason to delay this, the last part of the journey, so to speak.  Of course, I couldn’t. 

So, quietly, with no fuss, I took the black plastic bag out into the garden, undid the screw top and placed the ashes in the hole where I’d planned to plant the roses.  There, in the peace and quiet of a sunny Sunday morning, the task I had been fearing for quite some time had been done.