Currently Chasing: A Place to Grieve

I heard something recently that has stuck with me. 

"Everyone's grave is left unattended eventually." 

It made me wonder about the people who visit their loved ones often, until, for obvious reasons, they can't anymore, and how sad it is that it will look at some point like that person is not loved. It made me think about the wreaths that get placed on the graves of veterans during Memorial Day and that while I admired the ceremony and purpose of it all, I have never participated. Visiting graves has never been my thing. 

So much has happened in the last four years. So much has changed. It has felt like a ton of mini-deaths to different parts of me and my past, and I find myself wishing I had a place to go to grieve all the loss. Then this got me thinking about my mother. Because before therapy and counseling and self help books, there was my mother. She would listen to all of my woes and ails and chances were good that she had experienced something similar. She would give me the advice that I asked for, and I wouldn't follow it, because parents are idiots. I would fall on my face, and then mom would be there to give me a soft landing, and I'd bounce back up ready for the next splat. 

But my mom is gone. She has died too. And I don't have anywhere I can go to grieve her loss either. She was cremated. I thought her ashes had been spread, but recently my dad told me that he had them, or had some of them, because why wouldn't my mother want to spend her afterlife in her ex husband's camper. I have not seen the ashes, or even the urn. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know how much of my mother is in it. I only know that there isn't a gravestone, or a place where I can physically go and feel like I am close to her. Mentally and spiritually, I know she is always with me. I look in the mirror and see her often. But physically, she is no place. 

It has started to occur to me that I need a place. Maybe I'll put together some sort of time capsule, take it to a peaceful location near the water and bury it. And then that can be my place. Maybe I can add to it bits and pieces from my past and the pieces of me that are gone, and I can grieve and mourn their loss as well. Maybe having a place where all of that energy and emotion reside is the key to not having to carry it around with you daily. And you can go there as often as you need, until you can truly come to terms with the fact that it is where it needs to be, and that you are needed elsewhere. 

And then I can celebrate that eventual unattended grave. Until then, I'm a human urn, and I'll keep choking on the ashes.