Does it really end...

"Whether the universe is atoms or Nature, let this first

be established, that I am part of the whole

which is governed by nature..."

- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

“Will you go with me to Muskoka?”

That’s how the end started.  This end was closure to what had been a pretty rugged past few years.  This is not a sad or thoughtful piece, just a note of closure…

My younger sister Nancy, for completely unknown reasons, contracted (inherited?) Alzheimer’s disease and lost the war in February of this past year.  Her journey ended on a Sunday afternoon, and a week later we celebrated her life with a few stories and dancing to the music she loved.

A lot happens in those times of unexpected – or even expected – loss.  You don’t plan the memorial service before someone passes away…you simply start the game full blast at a time when you need to gather yourself in.  That, of course, comes later…after the dust settles…

‘…the dust settles’ – an interesting phrase, because that is precisely why and where we found ourselves on an incredibly sunny day on the shores of Lake Joseph…in the Province of Ontario…in the land of my birth – Canada.  The property, in the family for nearly 100 years, is now in the hand of someone else.  The cottages that contained so many memories for so many decades are now gone and small patches of cleared land in the forest are all that remain…and yet…and yet, nothing built or taken away had affected the shoreline one bit.  No sir, the rocks…the trees…all of it…all of it was as familiar as the back of my hand.

Here, as a gentle westerly wind came down the bay, in the shade of a very old cedar tree, we remembered once again and committed part of my sister’s…her mother’s ashes…to the lake Nancy had so dearly loved.  It ‘was’ a tender moment.

There was a little more to be done, for on this 212 acre (85.7 hectare) piece of land stands a 10-acre (4 hectare) lake we all called 'Lily Lake,' for surely it had hundreds of them on pads in the shallow waters along her shores.   On the maps, it’s call Arnott Lake – my mother’s family name – but to us…it was always Lily.

This lake is connected to Lake Joe by a small stream and had grown to its size through the work of a couple of beaver families that built and maintained a dam through ‘their generations’ long before my birth.  There are cranberry bogs…lots of frogs and other little living things that can be found in the small lakes of Central Ontario.  And the air…the air…there is something…some subtle cosmic pheromone that reaches so deeply inside…its familiarity so gently intimate, one not experienced in its ways, would simply miss its seductive draw.

Here, on this dazzlingly sunny day, we committed the rest of Nancy’s ashes to the waters of Lily’s shores.  She had been waiting for us…her water’s still and clear…the ashes drifting away, beneath her surface…away from the shore like the mists across the glen, propelled by an invisible wind…the task complete.

Mariah said when my time came, she would honor me in the same place, in the same way…I should be so blessed…

- ted