Dad Makes Shrines Mean More

My dad died last October after a few months battling bladder
cancer. Earl loved people. He couldn’t ride down an elevator
without making a friend. Or up an elevator, for that matter.

He was a Catholic school boy who at some point stopped
attending mass. But he never stopped living by his creed: caring
for and about others. As the eldest daughter (8 siblings for most
of my life), I discussed with him and Mom what he wanted after he
died many times: he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes
mixed with Mom’s when the time came. At that point, we kids
were supposed to decide where to sprinkle them both. I spent
more than a little time researching where to find the tree on his
family farm that he always talked about. I imagined some of their
ashes in the roses alongside the house my birth family has lived
in since 1971.

When the oncologist offered him some possibility to consider that
everyone in the room knew wasn’t a real possibility, he chose
instead to spend his remaining time receiving visits from every
one of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, asking
over and over how he got so lucky. When we all knew it wasn’t
luck. He had earned that love with the love he had shared with us
all his life.

Dad always told everyone, “When the good Lord wants me, the
good Lord is going to take me.” When he realized that time had
come, Dad decided he didn’t like his original plan for his remains.
So he called me aside to ask if I would please find a burial plot
and headstone that would work for him, my mom, my brother Scott who
had died of a glioblastoma two years prior, and another brother Mike (still living) and Mike's significant other who had also died prior. And could we also please arrange for the priest to visit.  I wish he had conferred with Mom more because I know how
tough it was for her to experience yet another shock, one that also involves her afterlife, so close to his death. But I adored my Dad. So I made the arrangements.

This past weekend we interred his ashes and those of Scott and
Angie under a beautiful marker with a pot of geraniums just like
the one that has adorned the front porch on Polk Street for 55
years.

My grandson Ben and daughter Jennifer stopped by the marker
on their way in to town the next day, and Eric and I stopped by as
we left town the day after that. Though I have long enjoyed
wandering cemeteries and admiring beautiful stones, I now see
them differently. Like the stone shrines on the Camino, the Reible family marker
is impermanent, yet it invites—maybe urges—us to stop and
connect with whatever we believe remains: dust, memories,
spirit, or soul. I miss you, Dad.