One will spread our ashes round the yard
Before she died, Jennie left instructions for me, because of course she did. I know they weren’t as detailed as she would have wanted them to be; despite all the time we had to prepare ourselves, her death still happened a lot more suddenly than either of us expected, and I know there were things Jennie wanted to do that she didn’t get a chance to. I’ve tried not to focus on that - I’m always going to wish there was more New Jennie Content in my life - and to be grateful for what she did get to, though, and I really am. So, so grateful.
A large portion of the instructions were around her funeral services, which were very helpful in the immediate days and weeks after she died - she was such a great planner. And then - and I feel like there’s no graceful way to talk about this so I’m just going to talk about it - some of the instructions were around what she wanted to be done with her body. She wanted to be cremated (so she couldn’t come back as a zombie), and she wanted a portion of her ashes to be spread, preferably near water she said. She had also mentioned possibly having some planted with a tree somewhere.
Jennie’s family and I divvied up her ashes. Her parents and sister all got small keepsake urns with some of her in them, and I took the majority of them home, where they’re on display along with a large wooden duck that we bought at a thrift store that she loved and often joked about being heavy enough to use to kill someone. I also had some of them set aside in a spreading tube, and some of them placed in a biodegradable urn that could go into the Earth. Spread near water or planted? She gets both.
The water spreading, I did in September. I forgot to post about it here. I know there are people who aren’t on social media but who follow this site and I apologize for neglecting you.
The last weekend of September, I flew out to Seattle for a small memorial celebration with a group of people who knew and loved Jennie. We met at a beach park and sat in a circle and talked and told stories and cried and laughed, and honestly it was perfect. And then from there I drove almost an hour north, to Kukutali Preserve, a place that I know Jennie loved. I hiked out to the beach where we had spent many afternoons sitting and turning over rocks (mostly Jennie did that) and just enjoying the quiet.
I sat for a while, listening and thinking and breathing in the cool, wet air, and then I took my shoes and socks off and rolled up my pant legs and took a few steps into the water and spread Jennie’s ashes. Afterward I got out of the water and sat on a log to let my feet dry in the sun, and I watched as the water dispersed the ashes. I sat there for I don’t know how long just watching that spot in the water. I didn’t want to leave but eventually I made myself.
Deciding where to spread Jennie’s ashes was easy, but figuring out where to plant a tree with her was more difficult. If I was going to spread her ashes in Washington, I thought I should plant the others in Ohio, and I had an idea right away of where to do it, at the nearby nature preserve where Jennie had loved to hike, and where we had also taken the duck that we attempted to rescue in 2016, which sort of spurred the move to Washington and that whole part of our lives. They didn’t allow ashes-planting, though, so I checked with a few other local parks and they either didn’t offer it or offered it for an insane amount of money. The more places I reached out to, the more I felt like I was grasping at straws, just trying to find somewhere, anywhere to do it. It didn’t feel right. And my guiding principle for the past eight-plus months has been that if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.
And then it hit me. Aside from Kukutali, there’s only one place Jennie would want a part of her to be forever. And it’s not in Ohio (sorry, Ohio).
Jennie posted a lot about the ravens, at least on social media. She loved those giant loud birds, and their little baby chainsaws, when they had them. She called the day she discovered that there was a pair of them living high in the trees at the park within walking distance of our apartment the best day of her life. Nearly every day of the summer of 2020, she would walk up to the park and do laps around the trail hoping to catch either a glimpse or the sound of the ravens. That park was one of the first places she wanted to go after her initial surgery, once she had strength enough to walk for any sort of distance again. Once the idea of planting a tree there with her ashes hit me, it became clear that there was really no better option. And the fact that, with only a few emails and a phone call, it was really easy to set up and coordinate the planting with the people who manage the park made it feel all the more right.
This weekend I’ve returned to Washington again to plant that tree, which I did yesterday morning. It’s in the woods at the Northwest Stream Center, which is adjacent to the path Jennie would walk regularly to visit the ravens. The tree is a Western Redcedar, native to the area, and it’s planted in a grove of other, much taller Western Redcedars. The stream center manager told me that, undisturbed, these trees can live for up to a thousand years - the oldest on record is more than 1,400 years old - and grow to between 200 and 300 feet tall. A bird expert at the center mentioned that owls like to nest in Western Redcedars once they’re tall enough, though they grow very slowly. The Oregon Department of Forestry calls the Western Redcedar “The Tree of Life.”
After he showed me the best spot for the planting, the stream center manager left me in the woods, with the tree in a plastic pot, a shovel, a mattock, and the urn with Jennie’s ashes. Digging the hole was easier than I expected it would be - the ground was soft, and I only ran into a few relatively small roots I had to bust through. Once the hole was dug I sat on the ground and held the urn for a long time. As I sat there running my fingers over the rough surface of the orb, I noticed a spot on the side of the hole, a little round space that looked almost like an alcove, perfectly sized for the urn to fit into. I had been worried that putting the urn in with or under the tree would crush and break it; that space took care of that problem. It was as if the ground knew she was coming and made a perfect little space for her.
There’s no plaque indicating that the newly-planted tree is Jennie’s or that a part of her is there with it. I don’t think Jennie would care about that, though. She wouldn’t want to disturb the landscape with human detritus, even if that detritus was in her memory. I think she would just want to be there in nature, in a place and with animals nearby that she loved. Maybe the ravens will nest in her tree sometime. Maybe a bear will climb in it or a pileated woodpecker will drill holes into it. I’m pretty sure that’s what she would have wanted.
Right now I’m a little taller than Jennie’s tree. Eventually she’ll be taller than everyone in the world. She’ll be in that spot for hundreds and hundreds of years. She’ll outlive us all. And that feels like the most right thing of all.
A huge thank you to Adopt-A-Stream Foundation Director Tom Murdoch for helping make this weekend’s planting possible. You can donate to the AASF and the Northwest Stream Center here.