Five Minutes After Burial

[wlotus]

Like Aunt Mo, I will leave more behind me than this...

Aunt Mo's Grave
16 April 2008

It's stark. It's bare. It's plain. It's the real end. After 93 years, all it took was 5 minutes with a backhoe.

Think about that for a minute, will you?

A lot of stuff pales in comparison to that reality, when we keep that in mind. All of the words, all of the trying to prove one's point, all of the power-plays, all of the screaming, all of the trying to feel better than someone else, all of the trying to get them to stop screaming and understand you for once will all end here, no matter how the situation plays out. In the long run, all of that doesn't mean anything next to a filled-in, flattened down, six-foot-deep hole in the ground.

That thought makes it easy for me to walk away from some people, places, and things...and makes me intensely grateful for the ones who are left. :-)

Comments

[untied.livejournal.com]

we buried my grandfathers cremated remains in an artificially green cemetery in the middle of oklahoma's central expanse. i brought earth from my home town, and from the house grandpa lived in before the state kicked him out to buy a freeway. after the dirt was tossed in on top of his ashes, there was a fine layer of ash on my fingertips, and i licked it off. my grandfather, who was already a part of my life, whose genes carried over from one my fathers generation to my own, was now a part of me at the end of his life, and it seemed fitting.
missing him sneaks up on me some days, and each time i realize the things i wish i still had with him i remember to make the most of things with people i still have. sometimes, you have to let the small stuff go, and most of the time, it's all small stuff.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

There is more in me about this, but it's just feelings, right now. Suffice it to say what you and I understand hit me hard in the sudden silence after the backhoe rolled away.