t a l l a p e

The order of service (as it were) for the scattering of my dad’s ashes at “The Farm” in West Virginia.

It was lovely, and wonderful, and cathartic. And there’s something to be said for the fact that my dad’s ashes aren’t sitting in my mom’s basement any longer. I can’t help but think that it’s a good thing.

Reading from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

Reading from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
“I am haunted by waters.”

Reading from The Book of Common Prayer
A selection from the section for commital of ashes

Scattering of ashes
On the lily-pads in the pond at the top of the hill.