Under the Hyacinth

In the middle of the night, Mom’s eyes flew wide; she had remembered Uncle Ding’s ashes. The tiny parcel allotted to Mom was in a brown plastic box inside a white cardboard box stored in the dining room under the sideboard, amidst the boxes for Dad’s antique toys. The ashes had been there since Uncle Ding’s beloved Sheila brought them to Mom in October, five months ago. Mom had not yet carried out Uncle Ding’s wishes that they be buried with his mother, my grandmother Byeo, in the cemetery of the local church.

Actually, Uncle Ding wanted to be dispersed several places. His first cousin was given a portion to sprinkle on my grandfather’s grave in St. Louis, and my cousins, Ding’s daughters, have kept small packets. In addition, in a shipboard ceremony, Sheila had flung some of the ashes into the seas of the Caribbean and saved a small parcel for herself. That inspired Mom to keep a bit of Dad nearby, and two months after his death, some of his ashes remain in a tin on the end table by his side of the bed. “Sometimes I talk to him,” Mom says.  

 

Anyway, what caused Mom’s alarm that night was a mental image of Uncle Ding’s ashes spilled and set flying by an auction company packer chancing upon Uncle Ding by mistake while searching for just the right box for one of Dad’s toys. 

 

For, day after tomorrow, Dad’s toy collection will be packed up and taken away for auction. While my mother has been astonishing in maintaining her composure in the weeks following my father’s passing, she can’t talk about this step, the loss of Dad’s collection, without tears. “It’ll be like another death,” she says. 

When Dad was alive, his toy room, formerly a den, was his joy. A colorful parade of tin and wrought iron replicas of past modes of transportation filled the shelves above the antique dry sink. Dad used to arrange and re-arrange the cars, trains, paddle boats, steamers, airplanes, zeppelins, and tiny people. He dusted, catalogued, and photographed them. He showed them off to any willing visitor. This was Dad’s room. When he was dying, my daughter Casey and husband Dave fled there to sit in Dad’s red chair to desperately toast his health. When he died, we all gathered there, each of us wearing one of his ties, jackets, or sweaters, trying to sense his presence while taking in his preferred cocktail-hour view of his prized collection. 

 

Once the toys are gone, Mom plans to paint the room a vibrant rose, no, make that blue…wait, perhaps beige? She has changed her mind many times, so the final color will be a surprise. Mom is going to hang posters, display family photos, and arrange the few toys she loves enough to keep. It will look great, but it won’t be Dad’s toy room anymore. Hm. Having said that though, I think it always will be.

 

So. Back to the ashes. First thing the morning after Mom mentally glimpsed the cloud that was her brother billowing in the dining room after an accidental opening, she went down and moved the box to the stairs. Having seen items remain in that spot for days, I said, “Let’s just take care of this, Mom, so you don’t have to worry about it.” 

 

We discussed the possibility of any legal issues that might surround unofficial placement of ashes in a graveyard. We thought there probably were. Technically, we were adding a smidge of the essence of another person to the family plot. What with the other Uncle Ding dispersals around the country, there weren’t many ashes left, but still, what if there was a glitch, and we were caught?

 

At the time, Mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table in the white plastic chairs my mother favors, eating English muffins topped with fried eggs cooked on the 1938 Roper stove that had been in the house when my parents bought it in 1963. Beneath our feet curled the faux red brick linoleum that could not be removed because of an asbestos layer. I love that about my parents’ house, the house where I grew up: things haven’t changed much. Well, they hadn’t until Dad died.

 

I noticed a hyacinth plant on the windowsill, the leaves still green and succulent, the pink blossoms peaked and wilted, but cheery. “I’ve got it, Mom. We can pretend we’re planting bulbs on Byeo’s grave.” Perfect. She liked the idea, and it was decided.  

 

Still, the “what if” of illegality remained which prompted a giddy review of potential headlines. “’Mainline matron’… no, make that ‘Mainline Widow,’” said Mom. “’Mainline Widow Arrested for Illegal Dig in Graveyard.’” We rehearsed our dialogue with any imaginary sextons, reverends, or cops who might happen by. “Oh, we’re just planting hyacinths. They’ll be lovely in the spring. This? Oh. Fertilizer. Just a nice, powdered fertilizer.” We thought we were hysterical. And, for two ardent rule-followers, daring.

 

Mom dressed for the caper, or… ceremony, in a white turtleneck, beige cardigan with gold buttons, camel coat, black trousers and a matching black hairband to hold her silver hair. She looked beautiful. I was in jeans and Mom’s purple parka.  

 

I took the plastic bag of ashes from its box and put it in a plain brown bag; less obvious, I thought. Mom fetched a shovel and trowel from the garage, and of course, we had the hyacinth in its black wire holder and bed of moss.

 

Our outlaw sense of euphoria carried us to the churchyard. The playground swings hung empty by the parish house. One white suburban was parked in the lot. If any souls were near, we couldn’t see them. Might there be a few loved ones about, though? Dad? Byeo? Are you here?   

 

The church is a handsome stone edifice encircled with the kind of cemetery in which anyone would be pleased to dwell for eternity. Granite headstones nestle in the grass yard among the massive trunks of towering oaks, centuries old. Now that Dad has joined his brother Henry and my grandmother there, it is a friendly, welcoming place. 

 

Dad’s and Byeo’s graves are near the driveway, so we parked, gathered our supplies –plus Uncle Ding - and walked the short distance. Dad’s headstone was not ready yet, and in the few months since his funeral, when my nephew lowered the small box of ashes into the ground, all signs of Dad’s moving in had vanished.

 

Mom stood by – and stood watch – holding the hyacinth as I jammed the shovel into the earth. I felt the oddness of the act, the sense of disturbance. Yet I knew Byeo would be thrilled to pieces, as she would have said, to welcome her son.

 

I dug down about eight inches. “Maybe a little deeper?” Mom suggested, so I scooped a few more shovels full. I was nowhere close to tapping the tiny box that held Byeo, still, I was aware of it down there.

 

While untwisting the wire tie, I kept the plastic bag of ashes concealed within the brown bag, then poured the fine gray powder into the hole and sprinkled it with a layer of soil. Mom loosened the hyacinth from its container and placed it in the earth. I shoveled in the remaining dirt, patted it down, and watered. 

 

Mom and I stood back and smiled. We had not been arrested, and Uncle Ding was with his mother. A loving request fulfilled. “Should we sing something?” I asked. We considered some possibilities. I was thinking “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” but since Uncle Ding was an old Yale Whiffenpoof, Mom opted for the Whiffenpoof song. I don’t know many of the words, so I put my arm around my mother’s shoulder and joined in where I could. “We are poor little lambs who have lost our way. Baa. Baa. Baa.” At the end of the song, we grinned and applauded. We were both teary, but happy, too.