From Ashes to Ashes

They don’t tell you that you follow the body. Mama had me cremated and then gave little bits of me away. Where my ashes went, I went.

She kept me in an urn perched atop the fireplace mantel. Papa tossed me up and down our favorite forest trail, which was nice; I was worried I’d never get to walk that again. (I can’t go more than a few feet from the ashes, you see.) Bud, my best pal, took me up our mountain and threw me into the wind. Lila, my girl, scattered me into the stream where I had asked her to marry me. Some of me settled into the muck at bottom. And some of me, as years went by, flowed all the way to the ocean, where I could swim around and see the fish. I found that sort of neat, all things considered.

So that was my life — or my death, rather. Jumping between my ashes, glimpsing the ones I left behind.

I visited Mama the least. Not because I didn’t like Mama. The opposite, really: I loved Mama so much that seeing her sitting in her rocking chair, gazing emptily out at the trees, day after day … why, if I wasn’t already a ghost, I’d say that it killed me every time.

Papa hiked our trail every Sunday. He was quiet, yes. Real quiet. Not much different that when I was alive. But lately that quiet seemed a little more peaceful, at least.

Bud used to climb our mountain every month on the anniversary of my passing. I’d pop over to the summit at noon and there he’d be, eating our favorite sandwich: banana and peanut butter. I’d sit next to him until he descended. That was the first few years. Now he climbs it only once in a while, maybe every six months or so. But a few summits ago, he brought his gal. And this past climb, he had a baby strapped to his back. That would’ve made me cry, if I could.

Mama and Papa’d be gone for long stretches, sometimes, and that was awfully lonely. But they always came back with smiles on their faces, until Mama settled back in her rocking chair and Papa went to tinker around in his shed. I hoped they did something worthwhile in those stretches. I hoped they took a cruise or backpacked around Europe or did any of the other crazy things retired parents should do.

My girl didn’t keep any of me for herself. I wouldn’t mind, if I didn’t ache to see her every second of every day. I thought she might visit Mama, but no luck. Maybe she moved on. That didn't bother me; I still visited her in memory every moment I could.

Round and round I went between these places. Hiking with Papa on Sundays. Seeing Mama when I could bear it. Watching Bud become the man I wished I could be. Missing Lila with every dead cell of my spectral body.

And then, one day, I felt a tug.

It was different, this tug. I’d always feel a little nudge when someone or something touched my ashes, like the fish that gave me a nibble, or when Mama carefully lifted my urn for just a second so she could dust. But this tug was different. This hurt.

It pulled at my midsection, so uncomfortable that for a moment I wondered if I had come back to life and been punched in the stomach. I closed my eyes and followed the tug, jumping through space and shadow to my ash location.

There stood a little girl, tossing sand into the air. My eyes zeroed in on my ashes there. What a curious thing, for them to end up on the beach. I suppose they would eventually.

I smiled at the little girl, then scanned the beach. Where were her parents?

And then there she was.

I froze, just staring at her. Olive skin. Dark hair down to her waist.

I marched right up to her, nose to nose, desperate now. I would know those warm, brown eyes anywhere. It was her. It was her.

With subtle wrinkles now, and stronger laugh lines. How long had it been? Seven years. Seven years and Papa still hiked that trail every Sunday, Momma still sat in that rocking chair, Bud still climbed that mountain.

How could it be? My ashes, tossed into that North Carolina stream, washed into the ocean, swirled up onto a beach that had to have been at least a couple hours away from home ….

“Lila,” I breathed, and for a moment she looked up, and my dead heart might’ve thudded a little — until I realized she was looking at the girl.

“Max, what did I tell you?” she called. “That’s too close to the water! Come over here.”

The little girl sighed and trudged back to Lila. “Why couldn’t we go to our normal beach?”

“I don’t …” Lila’s eyes glazed over, and then she gave her head a shake. “I don’t know, honey. I just … thought we should come here.”

The little girl paused and tiled her head before saying, “A daddy feeling?”

“A daddy feeling,” Lila confirmed quietly.

I jolted and looked at Max properly.

Hazel eyes.

I knelt down next to her, breathed her in, this four-foot little thing with my eyes and Lila’s hair and Mama’s freckles splattered across her nose.

And that little girl looked right at me. Not through me — at me, I know it. Right into my eyes. Hazel on hazel.

A daddy feeling.

Then she looked back at Lila. “When are Gramma and Grampa gonna be here?”

Lila looked at her watch. “Couple of hours. Bet that’s enough time for me to make a bigger sand castle than you.” Lila suddenly ran along the beach toward the damper, more malleable sand, shovel in her hand. Giggling, Max sprinted after her.

A lightbulb went off on my head and I jumped over to the house, to my ashes with Mama. Rocking chair empty. Lights off.

Gramma and Grampa. So that was where they went on their long stretches. I almost laughed out loud in relief.

There was my girl, and our girl, and Mama and Papa were on their way.

The presences of my ashes that I always felt in my body suddenly stilled. The presence from the mantel. The presence from the trail. The presence from the mountain. The presence from the stream. In one moment they were there and the next they had coalesced into a single, warm push, a gentle and most curious hand upon my back.

I smiled as I watched my girls play in the sand. Then I walked into the waves, toward the setting sun.