Please Remember Me, Don, and Johnny Appleseed

Lake Michigan Shore

It occurred to me recently that I’ve been “Johnny Appleseeding” Don’s ashes over two counties and seven places. Half were buried in April at a cemetery in a little town he loved. But this week---at seven months out from his passing---I scattered a quarter of Don’s ashes at Lake Michigan. Also this week I scattered smaller amounts in two other places: 1) under the white pine trees we planted right outside the window where I sit at my computer, and 2) along a nature trail. The nature trail runs close to the back side of the 160 acre farm where Don grew up. A month of two ago I poured some of his ashes in the river in the heart of Rockford where Don grew up. It was near the dog park where we used to take Levi. Then there are the ashes enclosed in a four inch tall ash urn kept in a velvet box, plus the tiny amount enclosed in my sterling silver ash urn locket.

In the 1800s Johnny (Chapman) Appleseed had a purpose when he went across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania planting apple trees but I have no clue what my purpose was in dividing Don’s remains between so many places. Maybe I really believe that out of the ashes new life grows and I wanted be sure at least one of the places I deposited them will remain undisturbed until that new life comes forth. (It’s never been my style to put all my eggs in one basket.) Or maybe I just like the idea that Don gets a choice of places to haunt until his soul gets tired of hanging around earth. And then there is the strong possibility that I just didn’t like the idea of having to go to a cemetery to remember Don on days when we’re supposed to honor the dead.

It’s a popular myth that Johnny Appleseed randomly planted trees in his travels as a missionary but the fact is he actually planted nurseries and built fences around them. Back in his days on earth, there was a law in the Midwest that required people who claimed frontier land to plant orchards to hold on to their claims and that made the land around Johnny Appleseed’s little nurseries popular plots to homestead because bargain priced nursery stock was close at hand. When he died his sister inherited 1,200 acres of his apple saplings, and to this day several locations claim Johnny’s gravesite. I can see how my decision to strew Don’s ashes over two counties could cause confusion over Don’s final resting place so maybe someday Johnny and Don will have a where-is-he type dispute in common.

The day I spread the ashes at Lake Michigan with my oldest niece and her husband in tow it was a beautiful, sunny day. We went to Don’s favorite antique mall, had lunch where we could watch boats going by and, of course, we drove down to the beach. From there, we walked a short distance down the shoreline where we left the ashes---some in the water and some at the top of a sand dune that is near where the burnt remains of a small town is buried underneath the sand. Mother Nature took what the fire didn’t and now Mother Nature will have her way with part of Don. Don loved the folklore of that old ghost town and he had read everything ever written on the subject. I still have $3 Banknote issued in 1837 from the bank in that ghost town---Singapore, Michigan.

All of Don’s ashes have been spread now but I had a hard time stopping myself from dividing them even more. On the way home from Lake Michigan I was trying to figure out why it was so hard to bring an end to my Johnny Appleseed-like mission. Did I do the right or wrong thing leaving Don in so many places? Imagine my surprise when just after that question entered my thoughts I got a sign that I took as a seal of approval. As I turned a corner a rainbow, big and bright appeared in the sky and at the same time Tim McGraw was on the radio singing the song, Please Remember Me. ©

 "Remember me when you're out walkin'
When the snow falls high outside your door
Late at night when you're not sleepin'
And moonlight falls across your floor….

 .....please remember me.”

Top of the Sand Dune

Ashes to Ashes

I just ordered one of those heart shaped ash urn lockets where I can put some of Don’s cremated remains and a photo. The sterling silver back will be engraved with his initials, year of his birth and death, and the words “soul mate.” I’d been looking at the Jewelry Keepsakes catalog online for a week now, trying to talk myself into waiting until things aren’t so fresh and sentimental thoughts didn’t over rule common sense. My cash flow will be better a few months and the interment of Don’s ashes won't take place at the grave site until spring so what’s the hurry, I told myself. But did I listen to my inner voice? Heck no! I can be as stubborn and she can.

When my mom passed away I held back a small amount of her ashes and I kept them in a miniature Tupperware bowl attached to a key chain, but somehow it got lost when I moved after Don’s stroke. I keep hoping against hope they’ll turn up and visions of that pitiful, lost little blue bowl were the final arguments that got me off my duff to order the locket. No one throws a piece of good jewelry in a what-not drawer like it’s a party favor given out at Tupperware parties. It would get treated with the respect it deserved. My inner voice says, “Forgive yourself already for losing Mom’s ashes! Shit happens.”

Ya, as hard as it is to admit, sometimes my inner voice is smarter than I am. But she won’t shut the heck up! I won the argument about the locket. Now she’s campaigning to hold back a whole baggie’s worth of Don’s ashes to take to Lake Michigan next summer. Don wanted the grave internment but my inner voice wants us both to also become part of the landscape---the water lapping on the shore, the wind that come off the lake and bounces around the sand dunes. My mom’s ashes were mixed with thousands of wildflower seeds and spread along a mile-long country path she loved to walk and I’ve never regretted that. It gives me peace to see the flowers that still bloom there, twenty years later.

But what comforts one person upsets another. My brother was so distraught over my mother’s directive that he couldn’t take part in spreading the ashes and ten years later when my dad died, he wanted a grave marker for the two of them. He actually dug up some dirt from where we’d spread Mom’s ashes and moved that dirt over to the grave site where my dad’s ashes were buried. He still goes there to tend the grave. Me? I’ve only been there twice in twelve years. But when I see blue cornflowers and yellow daisies growing wild, I think: “That could be part of Mom” and that makes me happy. My inner voice wants the same with Don. She wants us to be able to go to Don’s and my favorite place and be warmed by the thought that Don is now part of some of God’s best work. ©

NOTE added April14th, 2012. I found the little blue bowl containing my mom's ashes! I was looking for something else altogether and I found it in a box of keepsakes from my childhood that I got out to show my brother. When I pulled the little bowl out, he said he hadn't seen me that happy in along time. Back when I moved I must have put it in the box for safe keeping. It was safe alright...and lost for nearly twelve years!

NOTE added April 2024: In the last few years my oldest niece took me over to my mom and dad's headstone and I took the little Tupperware bowl of mom's ashes with me to scratched them into the ground.