Ashes

As readers of this blog know, my Mom passed away a year ago. Like my father, she wanted to be cremated, and like my father she wanted her ashes spread at our family’s cottage in Northern Wisconsin.

We weren’t able to do this right after the funeral. And with me and my two brothers spread across the country, it took us a while to get together to do this. Yesterday we finally all got together at our cottage.

The cottage is here:

You can zoom in and see the small lake, Pickeral Lake, that we are on. It’s in the middle of the woods. Nothing fancy, a simple cottage that was originally a hunting lodge. But if you like just hanging out on a lake in the woods, it’s beautiful.

We got the cottage when I was around 9. Prior to that we always went camping, so this was a major upgrade. As I think back, we didn’t actually do a lot there. Swim, canoe, lie on the dock, read, grill brats, chop wood, build fires, try not to burn down the forest. I loved the place.

Living in New York, I obviously don’t get there much. It’s a three hour drive from the Green Bay airport. And it’s not like there aren’t nice places closer.

But the place has a lot of memories. My mom loved wildflowers so she loved to walk around the lake. We’d be walking and she would see some random flower and invariably say something like, “oh, what’s the name of that flower again?”. And she was asking me. A teenage boy. So she would either get the exasperated, “Mom, you always ask me and I never know” response, or more commonly the wise-ass, “that’s the pretty purple kind” response. To which she would invariably reply, “Oh Steve…”.

We would just spend hours hanging out on the dock. We’d read,  Mom would bring down some cheese and crackers. We’d go for a canoe ride, Mom would bring down some nuts. We’d go for a swim, Mom would bring down some Doritos. Life was good.

So there’s really no better place to spread Mom’s ashes. It was a place she and my Dad loved, and it’s a beautiful spot. So yesterday I spent a few hours reminiscing with my brothers about the cottage. We took the canoe out. I swam across the lake. We talked some more and then we spread her ashes around. It was a gorgeous day at the lake, and while a sad task, it felt right.