Ashes

The thing they don’t tell you about someone’s ashes is that they’re not entirely smooth. I expected a grey flour, a charcoal sand. But I guess you don’t pass human remains through a sieve and separate out the chunks of bones and teeth.

We decide to spread my mother’s ashes off the top of Mt. Marcy in the Adirondack State Park.

Human ashes are heavy. They are pounds of sand — not a light bag of hourglass crystals.

We separate out the ashes on the front porch of the Airbnb. I cannot help but stare at the flecks that don’t quite make it into the ziplock bags, the ones that stick into the rough, blue, outdoor carpeting stapled to the wood.

I am insignificant and I will die, and we all die and then there might be nothing and darkness and terror, but is part of my mother stuck into the grooves of that scratchy blue carpet?

We’re each given two ziplock bags of my mother — we each carry about three or four cups worth of her up the mountain. It weighs down my bag more than I expect — falls against my lower back through my hiking pack.

At the top of the mountain, we meet a mountain steward. She warns us not to step on the fragile mountain scrub, the wirey bunches of muted greenery scattered across the rockface at the top.

She’s a kind, earnest woman, who I know would disapprove of our mission. I think of the pounds of my mother weighing down all of our packs, and wonder what kind of environmental impact she will have at the top of this mountain. My stepdad reminds us that this is technically illegal.

I wonder if spreading ashes never quite goes as expected.

I cannot help but think of Dave Eggers’ experience spreading his own mother’s ashes.

I stand up quickly and throw, this time some of the cremains sticking to my palm, which is now sweaty–fuck! … how lame this is, how small, terrible.

I am aware of this at the top of the mountain, hiding from the steward. I do not reach my hand into the plastic bag — I hold its edge and pour. I want it to catch in the wind, but instead, it falls in a sad pile, choking the delicate mountain scrub that we’re not supposed to walk on.

I worry about the steward approaching our makeshift camp where we’ve dropped all the pounds of ashes — the crime scene. Once my bag is empty, I stay only for a moment. I think only of the steward, and how I would explain this to her. What words I’d use—how I’d try to tell her the meaning behind it all. I do not want to.

I hurry down the peak, desperate not to be caught. I fold up the plastic bag, the now-empty ziplock that remains of my mother, pieces of her (are they her?) still tucked into the corners and dusted against the plastic, and shove it into the bottom of my pack.

I lead the climb back down, turning back every few hundred feet to confirm the steward isn’t following me, ready to reprimand.