Claire’s Ashes

With apologies to The Big Lebowski and an appearance by Steve Earle

After my mother Claire passed during the winter, my wife and I kept her ashes in our bedroom closet. Believe me, many people may have thought this rather morbid, but honestly we never gave it a thought. After a year, though, we knew it was long overdue to spread her ashes. Her love for the Civil War and, in particular, Gettysburg made the venue a no brainer. Research showed that there was a 75 dollar charge to spread ashes in a national park and a schedule would need to made. Well, being very familiar with the battlefield and a desire to save said 75 dollar, it was decided to spread my mother’s ashes surreptitiously.

So, on a brilliantly sunny May day, my wife Linda and I headed to Gettysburg. In attendance was my sister Susan who, at this point, had suffered many health issues leaving her blind and needing help to walk. Claire’s ashes, or more properly, cremains, were double bagged in thick plastic bags within my backpack. Now, Claire was not a petite woman so there was a substantial amount of cremains.

Being aware of Claire’s love for the 20th Maine, Joshua Chamberlain, and their stand at the end of the Union line on Little Round Top, that is where we headed. The plan being to leave some ashes there before preceding to Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard and a few other spots ( I said there were a lot of cremains).

Upon arrival, we headed back the wooded trail to the 20th Maine memorial. This, of course, with Susan was not a brisk walk but we were in high spirits. At the clearing in the woods was a Park Ranger leading a tour. We waited until they had moved on and I checked to make sure the coast was clear.

Setting down and opening the backpack, I retrieved a utility knife to slice open the bags. To this day I do not know why I just didn’t remove the wire twisty that held the bag shut. Hurrying to get this done before being discovered, I slit the bags and picked up the entire pack to dispense a small amount of cremains. Whether it was nerves or a desire to be quick, probably a combination, the entire bag shifted, dumping the entire cremains out onto the forest floor in an enveloping cloud of Claire dust.

I was coated in a fine powder of my mother’s cremains. My arms, my face, my glasses, my hair, in my nose and mouth. On the ground lay a perfect cone about a foot and a half high. The navy blue backpack was now light grey. As I spit and sputtered looking around for anyone that may have seen this, I was in full panic mode. I heard my wife laughing and my sister saying, “What happened?” I exclaimed, “I have Claire all over me!”

Linda then also started laughing. In the midst of this disaster, I tell Linda to take Susan down the path on the other side of the hill while I went back to the car. I wanted to clear the scene as soon as possible and not associate these two with this grey ghostlike figure that I had become.

When I picked them up at the bottom of the hill, they were both hysterical. Susan had evidently started passing gas in the throes of her giggling and continued farting the entire way down the hill. Linda said the trip down the hill was rather treacherous, with my sister being blind and all, but she couldn’t stop laughing.

Driving to another secluded area, I attempted to clean the dust off my backpack by slamming it against a tree – forgetting that I had a few dollars in change in one of the pockets. Of course, that pocket opened up ejecting the coins as forceful as a round of grapeshot.

After that we went to lunch and I managed to clean up in the bathroom, all three of us knowing that my mother was laughing her ass off.

EPILOGUE I

Two months later, sitting on the beach with my cousin Hallie, her brother Jamie calls to ask where I spread Aunt Claire’s ashes. He was in Gettysburg and his daughters wanted to visit. An hour later, after following my directions, he called back.

Right were I described the spot was a 10 inch high cone of solid grey material! Ensuing rains had reduced the size of Claire’s cone, but the core had hardened to concrete. My mother, for a short period of time one summer, had her very own memorial in Gettysburg National Battlefield.

EPILOGUE II:

A few years later, on one of our Cayamo music cruises, Steve Earle performed his song “Dixieland,” which is about an Irish immigrant fighting for the 20th Maine and Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg. Seeing Mr. Earle at the casino the next day, I asked him about the song and if he had ever been to Gettysburg. He had, once with some fellow musicians coming from a festival. He and a friend climbed the observation tower near the Confederate lines where Pickett’s charge originated. As they reached the top, he heard a fiddle playing “The Bonny Blue Flag,” a marching song used by the Confederates. Across the field he could make out Norman Blake standing on the stone wall at the High Water Mark, the apex of the confederate charge playing his fiddle. Sent chills down his back, as it did mine in the retelling.

I told him the story related above and he revealed his familiarity with cremains. He became friends, through his anti-death penalty advocacy, with Jonathon Nobles whose execution he witnessed. He received Mr. Nobles cremains, which he kept for a year as he decided where to spread. Mr. Nobles had become pen pals with a lady in England and, through her description of the English countryside, fell in love with the place. Seeing England had no death penalty, it seemed the perfect place to spread his cremains. Steve Earle secretly flew the ashes to England and “somewhat illegally” (his words), spread them near Oxford.