I might not be right about everything, but this is how I remember Sept. 21, 2024

We buried my mother’s ashes on a warm September afternoon, next to my father’s, in my home town. Their graves sit above the road—NC Highway 258 North—two giant’s steps from the house they lived in for more than 50 years.

That day, a year ago today, my two siblings and I gathered under the tent with her eight grandchildren and sixteen great-grands, to put her in the ground with her beloved dog Ruby (please don’t tell). My father’s ashes had been waiting for eleven years for her to join him. She took, as we all said, her own sweet time.

That day, surrounded by children ages one month to seventeen years—most of whom had never seen a funeral, much less a burial—it felt important to explain. There are churchgoers among them, though some were not. When looking at the wooden box that contained her, a few wondered just how she had gotten in there, small as it was. The tiniest had no idea of anything that was going on, except that there was dirt and some large stone things that looked fun for climbing on. I suppose the girls, and maybe some of the boys, thought the flowers were pretty.

The priest said the pretty words, marked the box with dirt and quietly retreated. I wondered where Ruby was, her own ashes in a box with her name in gold plate. As she lay dying, my mother never understood what had happened to her Ruby, a somewhat annoying Cavalier King Charles who favored pooping on the carpet in her old age to relieving herself outside.

The funeral home director, whom my mother loved since he buried my grandparents years before and then my father, waited nearby.

“Where’s Ruby?” I asked.

“She’s right here,” he said. “Would you like to do this now?”

Usually, they wait until the family has retreated to the house for the casseroles and the drinks and the lemon squares made by friends to bury the dead. But we had no home there anymore, no lemon squares to savor.

“Yes. Please.”

So this dear man drew Ruby’s ashes out of his SUV, took off his suit coat, tossed his tie over his shoulder and created a learning moment for all these great-grands (and grands) gathered to celebrate their “B”.

First, though, he brought out a sheet.

He laid it on the ground, then knelt by the hole that would contain my mother’s crypt.

“I want to preserve my suit,” he said, distilling our tension.

This was the same man who eleven years before had driven more than an hour in torrential rains in the middle of the night to retrieve my father’s body. That night, we wondered if he would show up in sweats and a t-shirt, but he walked into the room, his suit crisp as a summer Sunday at church.

So he picked up my mother’s crypt and placing it in the hole, reverently placed her urn—a beautifully and locally rendered wooden box—into the crypt, the dirt cross sprinkled by the priest still intact. He tucked Ruby’s box in with it, the old dog nudged right up against my mother, forever.

A shovel stood nearby on a tarp, ready for burial “the Anglican way”, the funeral director said. He took the first scoop of dirt and shoveled it into the hole. Then he turned.

“Who’s next?” (I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually say that.)

This, also, was unexpected. I’d never been a participant in a burial… only an observer. At my father’s commendation, we left before they did the honors. But somehow this seemed right for “B”. She had always wanted all of us to be there. All around her. No matter the occasion.

It’s here that I have to refer to the photographs. In my memory, I don’t know who actually took the first shovel full of dirt, but in my photographs, it’s the oldest great-grandchild. He’s changed out of his suit into shorts and a t-shirt—he started college this fall—his tears dripping. He loved my mother—both my parents—who were fixtures in his life.

We took our turns, one after the other, the younger ones asking questions. Did B fold herself up tiny, so tiny, to fit into the box? What about Ruby? Did she do the same?

My own grandson, then 6, stood by, and I could tell by his fidgets that he had questions, too,

“Would you like to ask a question?” I said.

He came over, leaned in over the hole.

I wish I could say truthfully what his question was, but I can’t. Somehow, though, I started talking about how the body is the vessel of the soul.

“What’s a soul?” he asked. The other kids gathered around.

“It’s what make you you,” I said, unsure myself about souls, really.

“Nobody has your soul except you,” I offered. “When we die, our bodies just give out, but our soul goes to heaven. B is there. Her body gave out.” She was 96 after all.

But how did she get in the box? That’s when I mentioned how our body becomes ash. Thank goodness the little ones didn’t feel the need to ask how.

On and on we shoveled. My sister. My brother. My nieces and nephews. (My mother never let a speck of dust lie in her house, so one niece, even though she shoveled, said B would not like this at all.) She is right.

Even the smallest walker, 2 at the time (the tiniest, who was born the day B died, was only a month old) took part in this ancient ritual.

God was in these very few minutes that it took to lay my mother to rest. I could feel it. What an honor to witness the closing of her life surrounded by the evidence of my parents’ love for each other.

There will be no other day quite like it. Sadness abated, surrounded by joy.