I really like the idea of having my ashes spread when I die.
The question is, where? Where is the one place I want my loved ones to gather in remembrance, and release my ashes to the wind so that my remains may travel the earth forever (my families religious beliefs on the afterlife aside). I can't pick just one place.
All the places I have been and the lives I have led. There is not just one I want to mark with ‘forever’. I hope by the time I do croak, I have visited even more places and been as many versions of myself as possible. I want to experience as much as I can, for as long as I am here.
I want to take in every moment. I want to remember how the rain felt splashing across my cowboy boots in Edinburgh, in that random alley. I want to remember the parts of the beach in Costa Rica that were actually someone else's yard, and I had just wondered too far.
If I am being honest, I would like to ‘milk’ (benefit from) my death for as long as possible. Even after I pass through to the great beyond. How do I ensure that this last place of remembrance really sends me off with a bang? How do I prevent bad weather, insect infestation, availability, and many other obstacles from ruining the one event that is supposed to only be about me?
Truthfully? I can't. Once I'm gone, I'm gone. Done. There isn't even an "I" anymore. But that doesn't stop me presently from wanting everyone to think about me. When you're gone people kind of have to only think nice things about you. I want my loved ones to think about me at any time. When they see an animal they know I would have loved, a view they know I would have killed to witness and take under exposed pictures of.
I want them to think about me In the desert- I have a real thing about the desert. The desert was the only thing I had ever known-for a good leg of the race there. Before age 10, I had never left the southwest. I had never not known heat and sand. I could look out in any direction andsee for miles. The plain of the desert was endless.
Surely that does something to a developing psyche. Everywhere felt like the middle of nowhere.
That's the easiest way to describe where my family is from. When someone from swampy, tree canopy’d Louisiana I asks me about New Mexico- that's what I tell them. It’s the middle of nowhere. It’s sandwiched in between 2 other much “larger”states And I'm proud that actually. I am from the middle of nowhere.
And so, a proposal:
I am not sure as to what the ethics surrounding the spreading and shaving human remains are-
but I would like my funeral or wake or celebration of life or whatever to have goodie bags.
Yes obviously, I wont bury the lede, my ashes will be in them.
But I would be tasteful about it. I'd throw real wildflower and grass seeds in there or something.
That way it wont exactly feel like littering.
I want the bags to be fairly small. Small enough to fit in maybe a pocket or a vehicles glove compartment. Small enough to forget you even have it on you.
I want it to be something you find when you're digging for napkins on a roadtrip. I want you to find it in your coat pocket 5 years after my death. I want you to stop and think "Shit. I forgot I had this".
Then, inevitably, you think to yourself "How I do I get rid of this?”, ” Should I get ridof this?”.
You knew me when I was alive, surely I deserve a more personal send off. I entrusted you and other loved ones with the honor of this final step in ‘sending me off’.
Obviously, you have to get rid of it. That's the whole point. And I want you to release it.
Walk off to the side somewhere and let me loose.
You'll take a small moment. You'll take in your surroundings, no matter how plane and mundane, you'll still take it in. You will grieve me (hopefully) and you'll think about me being pretentious enough to make you do this.
But every now and then, you'll stop, pull over on the side of the road, stop and stretch your legs. You'll think "man, I am in BFE” You will look out at your surroundings and they will all be unfamiliar. You don’t exactly know where you are. Who cares. You’re about to hop back in and leave anyways. But everyone needs a breather, to stop for a second.
But you remember stopping that one time, and releasing my goodie bag. And you’ll like to think that I am there with you, in the same Middle of Nowhere.