#6. The ashes
continued from #5, The Dancing ….But in some adapted dialectic, I seem to be in both perpetual mourning for my community, and, more recently, helping to organize to sustain it. So this summer, we determine to bring the dancing back.
photo by Judy Shulman, Oak by Goldens Bridge Lake
#6. The ashes
If people are not “indigenous,” can they nevertheless enter into the deep reciprocity that renews the world? Is this something that can be learned? …Not indigenous, then, but “naturalized.”...To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground… Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit.
– Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
Cremation seemed like, well, an abomination. While a subject of active debate in Judaic religious law, the practice is slowly becoming more accepted in some Jewish communities. Still, reducing my mother’s body to ashes felt like an additional injury on top of the crushing loss when she died last Fall. The gas chambers loomed, frankly. But this is what my mother wanted, and we found ourselves faced with the decision of what to do with her ashes.
Last year, my parents deeded the Goldens Bridge house and the acre to my brothers and me. We’ll be here for at least another generation, which in itself seems a miracle for a U.S. Jewish family. My metabolism is keyed to expect and sometimes to precipitate abrupt endings and repeated re-inventions. Generational trauma, perhaps, poking out at odd angles - better be prepared for the next attack, exile. Home, connection to land and place, precarious at best.
Yet here we are, nearly a hundred years later. To realize we have a place to return to is a continual surprise. We grew up with these trees, we know every rock outcropping. We belong to this place, I dare say. My mother kept a flower garden at the foot of the towering locust at the center of the acre. I recall her crouching down with a trowel in her hand to tend to the Bleeding Hearts, putting in marigolds around the edges. Though the locust is gone, the lichen and moss-covered stone that was at the garden’s center is still there. Around it - this will be the place to bury her ashes, mixed in with the soil to nurture the flowering shade plants we put in.
When I describe cremation and what we’ll be doing with Grandma’s remains, Zevi’s immediate response: “That’s disgusting and also that’s beautiful”. And she follows through. She, my brothers, our partners, my father and I stand around the newly built garden on a July morning. We recite some texts, among them from the Psalm I:
It is well for the person who in the paths of evil did not stand, And who did not sit among the cynics. And they will be as trees planted by the waters. Which bring forth fruits in their time; And their leaves are not withered, And in all that they do they will triumph.
Voyl iz dem mentshn vos iz nit gegangen in der eytse fun dee reshoyim un oyf dem veg fun dee zindike iz nit geshtanen un in der zitsung fun dee shpeter iz nit gezesn un zey veln zayn vee beymer geflantste bay bekhn vaser vos git zeyer frukht in zeyer tsayt un zeyer blat vert nit farvelkt. un in alts vos zey tuen veln zey baglikn
- Yiddish translation by Hershl Hartman
I’m struck to find here the trees planted by the waters – that “We Shall Not be Moved” (the labor and civil rights anthem we grew up singing with Mom, with our community) has this Judaic origin. Held by the ancient words, I can feel that our mother did not harden toward cynicism, that never did she stop trying hard for her principles. And that in this time that is after her lifetime, feeling these attributes, her memory is for a blessing, as it is said.
We shall not be moved And like the tree that’s planted by the waters We shall not be moved
Is this about her soul being gathered to the ancestors, amongst that grove of trees that is planted and tended there by the waters? That we can find a path to that place, and there to remember her? And that we may be able to remain in this place, not to be moved away?
After reciting in English and halting Yiddish, it is now upon us to attend to the ashes. We open the urn and with small trowels we begin to transfer the powdery white substance to the ground. We are awkward with it, sifting the ashes into shallow trenches here and there around the plants, tears streaming down our faces. It is slow work; this urn contains way more material than we imagined. Finally it is Zevi who scoops her hands fully into the container. I follow suit, and then all of us do, now digging our handfuls of ashes directly into the soil.
Here are the powdered bones of my mother, now an ancestor. And here is the place for us to make her ashes part of the earth.
Lovely. I imagine the family rising, at this point, and dancing around the newly turned earth, like Matisse's The Dance.
Such a moving story, Billy. Human composting is now available in NY State, as well as in Washington where I live. My late husband's nutrient rich soil joined my mother's ashes in our backyard, permaculture designed garden last summer. I imagine their molecules combining with the mycelium to create rich networks of love vibrations within this sacred space. Our Thich Nhat Hanh sangha will do walking meditation here once the sunsets are later and the weather warms up. You've inspired me to flavor the rituals with some Yiddish humor and songs, like a good Jewbu pagan.