Memento Mori
They are hunched over the yard, the ground beneath them soft and pliable from a recent rain. In his hand a spade. In hers a spoon.
They are digging.
The treasure they seek he described to her an hour earlier as she, my daughter, sat on his knee on his back porch. “You see all those yellow flowers out there,” he said, a leathery finger pointing to the lawn surrounding them. “If we let them stay there in the grass, they’re gonna kill everything. So we gotta dig them out.”
She watches his finger, turns her head to take in the vast sea of yellow around them. She doesn’t say, “But, Pawpaw, the flowers are pretty,” like her older sister might say. No, she simply nods her small, blonde head, takes the spoon from her grandfather’s hand, and goes to work.
Side by side, the two of them slide the metal edges of their tools into the rusty red of the Carolina soil, pushing down deep, then tilting their handles downward, easing the thin roots of each dandelion free from the dirt, up and out into the June sunshine.
My daughter’s thin fingers, tiny and delicate as tender shoots themselves, take the stem, lift it up till the yellow face of the flower is a breath away from her own, and smiles. Her blue eyes stare deep into the petals for a moment before she places her quarry on the pile beside her.
“You are a hard worker,” her grandfather says, plants from his own fist falling upon the pile, doubling its size. She is too young to know that this is the highest praise anyone can ever hope to receive from him. And here she is at the slight age of three already bestowed with the blessing.
She angles her head toward him, her right eye squinting out the sun, her left eye searching him out, and says, “You’re a hard worker too, Pawpaw.” And they laugh together, hers the tinkling wind chime of a giggle, his a bellowing guffaw. Then, they bow their heads down again, hands to the ground, eyes to the treasure, hearts to the work.
It was one of my father’s favorite memories of my daughter. He reminded me of it often during our yearly summer visits to his and my mother’s home. Sitting on the porch, his mouth would break into a grin. “Remember that year when Abby helped me dig up the dandelions. She was just a little squirt, but she helped me do the whole yard,” he’d say, shaking his gray head in disbelief. “She was amazing.”
Memento Mori
This year Ash Wednesday fell on the 17th birthday of my daughter.
When I first discovered the upcoming intersection, I immediately took offense. It was no different than the feeling I had on our first Ash Wednesday in the Episcopal church when our normally cheerful and exuberant priest solemnly declared, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return,” as she slid her ashen thumb across our daughter’s forehead. There was the instinct to catch the priest’s hand in the space before it reached my child, hold her wrist and offer terse instructions to, “Move right along; my child won’t be needing that.”
But that was not why I had come; to continue living within this charade of control. No, I was there to remember that the very thing I wish to control most of all, to avoid no matter what, will happen not just to me but to those I love most. And it will happen without exception.
I am keenly aware of that this year. Before his death my father told us that he would like to be cremated after he died, fast forwarding his body through all the time-consuming theatrics of natural decomposition. Now his ashes sit in a white box atop a shelf beside the tv in what was his and my mother’s home. In the same square foot of space on that shelf, he probably sat his glass of Diet Coke during Sunday Night Football or his sunglasses after a morning spent working in his yard.
From dust he came, to dust he has returned.
And it is enough to double me over…until I remember her.
The small, blue-eyed girl who toiled with him that summer day.
Who this morning we woke with a birthday song and chocolate crepes on a tray and whose sunburst of a smile greeted our delivery.
Who still offers her cheek to me for a kiss every morning before school no matter how late she’s running.
Who is still a hard worker.
Who still laughs like a wind-chime blowing in the breeze.
Who has always and will always announce her arrival into every room with determined, resounding footsteps that declare, “I am here!”
I am here.
You are here.
That too is the Ash Wednesday message, is it not? We are destined to ashes, yes, but from those ashes we were created first.
We are here.
Memento Vivere.
Beautiful thoughts! Thank you for sharing!
Another beautiful story, Maile. 💜