Mount Blanc

Mount Blanc is the tallest mountain in Europe at 15,777 feet. 

I know, because in an effort to be prepared, I looked it up. 

Last weekend my family gathered, in part to inter my father's ashes. 

My parents thought ahead about the end of their lives in many ways, but in particular they bought a cemetery plot and designed and purchased a headstone. They were very organized and thoughtful in what they wanted. 

My siblings and I are old enough that if we died tomorrow not many people would say “but they were so young.” This was a weekend to give a little thought about what would happen when our own time comes. That's when my sister said, “I'd like my ashes spread on the top of Mount Blanc.” 

What the hey? Did I mention that Mount Blanc is 15,777 feet tall? I don't want to sound judgmental, but that seems like a big ask. 

In an effort to be less demanding, I said, “When I die I want my family to spread my ashes in an assortment of restaurants and bakeries in Paris.” 

I don't want to brag, but my idea was far more popular. My kids even worked out some of the details. Remember how in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins hid the evidence of his tunnel through the prison walls by putting the dust and gravel in his pants cuff and spreading it in the prison yard? 

So, that, only with croissants and fancy cake. 

It was a welcome bit of levity in what was an intense weekend. One of my brothers-in-law is a potter and my parents had commissioned beautiful urns that sat on a shelf in my house for a decade or so, until they were needed. Our son made a small vault of 3/16 inch steel, with perfect welds and a lid that fastened with Grade 8 bolts. Dad would have loved it. The family came from several directions, including crossing international borders. Everyone who came did so despite a certain amount of bother. It made me think of a scene from a tv show. In The West Wing, a father is talking about his daughter going to college at Notre Dame and worrying about how to pay for it. He said, “It's going to be hard, but it's okay that it's hard. It should be hard. Putting your daughter through college, that's a man's job, a man's accomplishment...” 

Setting aside the sexism of just what constitutes a man's job, it's something I think we've lost to some extent, that there are some things that will be hard, that should be hard, but that's no reason to not do them. 

Sunday morning, I took a cup of coffee and a couple of shovels to the cemetery and dug a hole in front of his name on the tombstone, moving aside the American flag and American Legion flag that the Legion post had placed. By the time I finished, my coffee was cold, which made me smile to think of the gallons of bad coffee my dad and I drank together over the years, mostly in close proximity to turned earth.  

I came back home to the bustle of brunch preparations. After a great meal we cleaned up, changed clothes, climbed into a half dozen cars and headed for the cemetery. There were some tears, some hugs, but in the end, we filled the hole, put the sod back in place and went on our way.  

It wasn’t easy to put the last physical remains of a good and decent man to rest. He and my mother were married for seventy years, apart for five, but now their remains are next to each other forever. 

It was hard, but it's okay that it was hard. 

It should be hard. 

Copyright 2024 Brent Olson