Sometimes, parking the car and
walking into our apartment just feels like coming home. More often, though,
it's remembering all the times coming home with Stephanie, and all the
times coming home to Stephanie.
It's no longer shocking, like
it was at first, but it still seems insane, idiotic, incomprehensible that
Stephanie is gone from the world. What is the purpose of anything at all, when I
can't see her smile or hear her laugh? Why bother with anything, when she's not
in the apartment, in the car, or in the seat next to mine at the movies?
Work, home, work, home, work, home,
weekend at home, rinse, lather, repeat. Now and then there's a walk, always
spent remembering Stephanie. There's a Shrine of Stephanie mementoes where I
often stand, remembering specific moments. And there's a cat Stephanie
loved and held, that jumps in my lap soon as I'm done eating dinner every night.
And in the corner are Steph's ashes,
in the same plastic sack, inside a cardboard box, inside a white paper bag, all
the same as when it was handed to me at the funeral home, minus a few ounces of
ashes now in her parents' possession.
It's a strange concept — the ashes
of the departed. I'm generally slow on the uptake, and for more than a year now
I've felt next-to-nothing about the ashes that once were Stephanie.
Her
toothbrush is still at the bathroom sink, her make-up is still in the car, and her
recipe cards have been moved from the kitchen to the Shrine; these things
remain, because these were things Stephanie wanted and used. Countless other of
Stephanie's possessions are still in the apartment, or in storage in the
basement, waiting for me to sort through them all. But the ashes? What use are
the ashes?
That's been my mindset, but for
reasons impossible to put into words, it's occurred to me today that the ashes
are supposed to be spread, shaken out like salt and pepper, at some place that meant
something to Stephanie.
In many ways we weren't "traditional,"
and maybe that's why the traditional spreading of the ashes hadn't occurred to
me. But it suddenly seems like a worthwhile tradition. So where should Steph's
ashes be scattered? At some of her favorite places ...
Olbrich Gardens, in
Madison, where she was always happy to walk among the flowers. We went there every
spring, several times every summer, any time she needed some sunshine and a reason
to smile...
· Pohlman Field in Beloit, where we enjoyed so many baseball
games. Steph always had a beer and a hot dog, always liked the beer and always
thought the hot dog was disappointing, but always wanted another hot dog the
next time..
· LaBahn Arena, where Steph delighted in watching the
University of Wisconsin women's hockey team. Five bucks per ticket, sit
anywhere, and watch an excellent team that usually wins. And mostly, she'd say,
watch women being excellent at what they do...
· Cinematheque, the local venue for old movies, artsy movies,
and foreign movies. We attended many, many shows, usually enjoyed and
appreciated the screenings, and almost always left a donation in the box, since
admission is free...
· And a few of her favorite restaurants in Madison — Ogden's North
Street Diner, Maharani Indian Buffet, and Buraka Ethiopian Restaurant...
Ashes will be spread in all these
places, though of course, like any dust or powder, the ashes won't stay where
they're scattered. Outside, they're going to blow away with the wind, and
inside, at the theater and in the restaurants, 99% of the ashes will be sucked
into a vacuum cleaner that same night. But a few molecules will remain, and I'm
telling myself that those molecules will be there for a long, long while. Instead
of merely memories of breakfast with Steph at Ogden's, a few fragments of
Stephanie will permanently be part of Ogden's, or for at least as long as
the building stands.
And no, nobody's asking permission
for any of this, because someone might say no and no is not an acceptable answer.
There's no damage being done, by adding a few teaspoons of dust to the sixteen
acres of greenery at Olbrich, or to some corner of the carpet at a restaurant
or cinema. The funeral home gave me several pounds of ashes, and only a few
ounces will be left in any of these places. Most of Steph's ashes will always
be in the box, in the Shrine.
So, several places in and around
Madison need Stephanie's ashes, and there might be a few more when I've thought
longer about it. Today, though, only two other locations come to mind.
Locally, her ashes need to be spread
around in our apartment. For all the time we lived in San Francisco and Kansas
City, Steph was homesick for Madison. It took her several years to admit that
to herself, but Wisconsin is where she wanted to be, needed to be, and we were
both so glad that we moved to the dairy state.
When we arrived in Madison with a
truck full of our stuff, and started looking for a place to live, this 50-year-old
building was the first apartment we looked at. We started moving in the next
day, and it's the only apartment we had in Madison — fourteen years in these
same three rooms.
We had our complaints about the
place, of course. It's not wheelchair-accessible, and those few steps at the
front door became quite an obstacle when Steph was no longer walking. Among the
lesser annoyances, our neighbor across the hall lets her grandkids play in the
hallway, right outside our door, so we sometimes hear lots of screaming and
stomping. Our bedroom is directly over the hot-water heaters in the basement,
and thus gets uncomfortably warm once in a while.
We had assorted other grumblings,
all the gripes and grievances you'd expect from years living in the same rather
old, slightly dilapidated building. But the neighborhood was perfect for us —
safe and quiet, with the more metropolitan Washington Avenue just a few blocks
away. And the rent is reasonable.
We felt that we'd found the right
neighborhood, and the right apartment for us. Steph was at home here from the moment
we carried in the first box of our stuff, more than she'd ever been at home in
California or Missouri. And that made it home for me, too.
Certainly, then, some of Stephanie's
ashes will be spread around this apartment. Ashes in the oven, maybe in the
fridge, because she loved cooking in our kitchen... Ashes in the bedroom, where she
could let down all her defenses at the end of every day... Ashes in the living
room, where we spent most of our leisure, loitering and lingering, watching old
movies, surfing the internet, and talking about infinite everything...
There's only one other place that comes
to mind, where Steph would want her ashes sprinkled. In San Francisco, at the
western end of the N Judah streetcar line, across the pretentiously named Great
Highway, lies Ocean Beach, a lovely, sandy stretch of shore.
We went there for
picnics, for sunsets, for holding hands, and to lose ourselves in the view of the
Pacific Ocean. As far as you could see, just water. I grew up near the ocean,
in Seattle, and was maybe more accustomed to the vastness of the sea, but
Stephanie was a Midwest kid. The Great Lakes are mighty big, but they're not
oceans, and Steph was always awestruck at the ocean.
Long after we'd left San Francisco, we
frequently reminisced about our time there, and talked about what we missed
most. We often spoke of taking a vacation to San Francisco, and what we'd want
to see and do if we were there for a week or two. We wanted to visit San Francisco like
you'd visit an old friend, and while we never got around to planning such a
trip, it was always on our long-term wish-list.
When we talked about such things, we
could each come up with a dozen things we missed about San Francisco, and they
might not be the same dozen things we'd thought of when the same question had
come up a few months earlier. But always, at the top of Stephanie's list of things
she'd loved and missed about San Francisco, and near the top of my list, was
the streetcar ride to the ocean, and our picnics in the dunes.
Thus it occurs to me this morning,
that I need to spend a week or two in Frisco. Maybe next summer, if I can
afford it, but it needs to be soon. To see again the city where Stephanie and I
fell in love, and where we spent the first years of our marriage. To see the
apartment where we lived, the taqueria where we had our first meal together, the
bake shop where Steph bought Mexican-style pastries, and to rekindle myriad
other memories to be found nowhere else. And definitely, to ride the N Judah to
the Pacific Ocean, and pour some of Stephanie's ashes into the sand.
