A different kind of life ever after

My first encounter with an elaborate and overwhelmingly sad memorial was for the death of my father when I was 16. After the pomp and circumstance of a military funeral, he was cremated, and my mother kept his ashes in the cupboard for years waiting for the right place to inter his ashes.

Sometimes she would still get phone calls for him, and she would say, “I’m sorry; he can’t come to the phone right now,” as she glanced over at the door of the cupboard that held his remains. A headstone at a military cemetery in Denver finally became his permanent resting place, and her intent was to be placed beside him after her death.

We did honor her wishes when she passed, but we also kept some of her ashes and gathered as a family at the river she loved to spread them. Months later, my brother and I purchased a stone memorial bench and placed it next to the Poudre River with her name and an inscription that simply said, “She loved this river and this park.”

I thought about that bench as my husband and I hiked parks in the southeastern section of Vancouver Island last week. No matter the park, at every beautiful vista or every serene scene, a bench waited, each with an inscription for someone’s beloved.

I stopped and read who was remembered at every single bench. Some lived many years. Some died very young. All were honored by the words left in their names. As I read through the inscriptions, I realized I was reading about people I probably would have loved had I met them on the trail.

Because people you meet on the trail are never strangers. They smile readily and share easily. Moments of conversation on the trail, however brief, create a micro community where scraps of stories get shared and love flows between with nature the common bond.

We stop and ask directions from a young woman getting a respite as a mom from a busy four-year-old. Before we head on our way again we have learned that she and her husband are expanding their 600 square-foot cabin, but it will not need to be bigger because they do not need to accommodate the child that never made it to birth.

When she points to the direction we need to head, a bench waits there in the forest.

A woman stops to pet our dog on the trail, and we learn about the loss of her beloved dog and hiking companion of 15 years. She tells us that today is the first day that she is able to go out of the house and walk these trails he loved, and she is letting herself be happy at the memory and weep for the loss. And we weep with her.

I glance back at her disappearing form, and at a bend overlooking the river, a bench is waiting.

I can not help but think about the prayer, “May their memory be a blessing.” In the Jewish tradition that means that we focus on how a memory helps us bring warmth, joy, and purpose to the living and calls for a commitment to bring forward the values of the person who died.

All of those ideals live in these benches.

The memories etched on these benches have held those inhaling a shared joy of wild places.

The memories etched on these benches have provided shared respite for those weary in

body or soul and seeking a moment of peace.

The memories etched on these benches have held the shared tears of those with hearts broken from grief and needing comfort.

I did not know a single name on a single bench on a single trail I hiked those seven days. But they became alive to me through our shared love of wilderness places.

Through the words written by family and friends I learned why they were treasured. I learned of their hopes and dreams and what they valued.

And I learned that love is not a static thing buried underground, but a living, breathing, comforting memory – a blessing from generation to generation.

May his memory be a blessing.