Dear Sara, my Sweet Dead Sister,
Happy Anniversary! It was two years ago on All Souls Day I wrote my first letter to you, Sis — taking the memory of you to task for the cremation of your body and regret that a burial process of decomposition, which we had talked about, was not available when you passed. Today, there is Recompose. I signed up for a Precompose plan of 70 monthly payments of $100 each. And to continue the idea of writing to you, my Sweet Dead Sister, I set myself a “writers’ prompt” to write to you every month for the next 70 months, beginning January 2023.
Some of your ashes are in Karen’s garden near those of our parents. I remember the time we had trying to open the fancy container holding Dad’s ashes in a motel on Ventura Beach with the 1996 presidential election on the TV where Clinton was winning re-election. It was just you and sister Nan, Peter couldn’t make the trip to Encinitas to clean out Dad’s apartment following his death. I was driving back a rental van filled with the stuff of Dad’s we wanted to save. You and Nan flew back the next morning.
That evening, with a bottle of wine or two and giddy that Clinton was winning, we got this idea to cast handfuls of Dad’s ashes into the ocean, as he loved living in California with his second wife — actually, his high school sweetheart who married another while Dad was away at his first year of college, and who reunited following the 15th Annual High School Alumni Reunion! She was still alive but had surrendered to dementia long ago.
Anyway, back in the motel room, with live audio of the surf just outside our sliding glass door, we couldn’t get the origami-style metal box open. We had notched up to prying with a screwdriver when Nan noticed traces of Dad’s ashes were on the Ventura Beach map we’d placed to protect the motel desk.
Today, the pseudo gold container, artistically folded into itself, is buried in Karen’s garden, alongside Mom’s ashes in a cardboard box, and under a concrete anchor holding two thin, long poles topped with a pair of abstract copper angels by yours’ truly.
Karen’s father’s ashes are buried near the budda-in-a-birdbath sculpture.
And in the far end of the garden, close to an iron table and four chairs, are several feline companions returning to the earth — as should humans, again.
For the video, I used a clip from our home movies showing you all decked out in white for your First Communion in 1955.
We think of you every day, Sis —
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So sweet...my sweet man.