OPINION My Mother’s Ashes

Spread my ashes around a tree in the Hudson Valley.

My mother planned her death carefully—body donated to medical research, final documents in order and she chose when she stopped taking her medication. She told me that she wanted her ashes to be spread around a tree in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley.

This instruction weighed on me because I hadn’t executed it yet. The box of ashes, returned from the medical college, sat on the dining room windowsill for a year. Mom’s spirit witnessed and heard all the dinners, parties, and drinks with friends. This trip to Hudson Valley had been her final request.

My mother, who grew up in New York City, cherished her time in upstate New York. It was where she gardened, gave birth to me, owned her first home, and built a life. She raised me and then became a foster mother in a white bungalow in Albany that always needed some work. Mom was always gardening and cooking. She loved visiting the farms and orchards. She loved cooking with the produce and meat grown in the Hudson Valley. Mom loved doing these things with her family.

When Mom asked for her ashes to be spread around a tree in the Hudson Valley, she did not mean for me to do it alone. She wanted me to share the experience with my foster siblings. We are scattered in different areas since Mom died. We live in different places, but we remain tethered to Mom’s love.

The decision to also spread Mom’s ashes in Maine was my decision. It was a place Mom always dreamt of going but never reached. Mom asked me on multiple occasions to help plan a Maine vacation, but I was so in love with “Chicago summers” that I balked at the timing. The Maine coastline was her version of a perfect family summer vacation: family, trees, the ocean, a deck and the smell of salt air. She never made it. I regretted not going with Mom when she was able to go, but I would take her now.

Windham Mountain

This month, my siblings and I met in the Catskills. In the height of summer, Windham Mountain wasn’t covered in snow and slush as I remember. Instead, the ski trails are grassy boulevards cut amid large expanses of forest. The air is rich with pine and damp soil.

I met my siblings at the base of a trail with their spouses and children, and we walked through woods and wildflowers until we reached a spot of damp soil, around a large tree, near a babbling brook, and a collapsed stone wall. We each took the bag of ashes and spread them around the tree. For a while, no one said anything. Then, we told stories about how mom fought for us, included us, loved us and cherished us.

In a way we were trying to recreate the feeling of Mom’s unconditional love. As we choked back tears and listened to stories, we did feel a togetherness we hadn’t felt with each other since my mother died. We went back to the house and celebrated Mom over a meal with food from her favorite Albany butcher and local Hudson Valley farms, as she would have wanted. We told more stories, shared important events in our lives and made plans to see each other at Christmas.

Mother Nature worked her magic. That evening a long, steady rain battered Windham Mountain soaking mom’s ashes into the soil.

Bar Harbor, Maine

A few days later, I arrived in Bar Harbor alone. The Maine coastline unfolded from the house I rented with my cousins in a wash of green trees, rocky coast and salt air. I asked my Mom’s nieces and nephews to join me in Maine. Due to a large birth gap between my mom and her siblings and the fact that I was born to my parents later in life, Mom’s nieces and nephews are closer in age to my mother than they are to me.

My cousins, their spouses and children arrived over the next few days. We explored Maine together as Mom would have on vacation. We visited Bar Harbor, hiked in Acadia National Park and took a wildlife cruise on the Atlantic Ocean. We ate lots of lobster and blueberries. We laughed and caught up on each other’s lives.

At high tide one evening, as the sun was beginning to set, we came together to stand on a rock jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. We each took a turn spreading her ashes in the ocean. My cousins were silent as they said goodbye to my mother for a last time.

Again, as each of us choked back tears, we told stories of inclusion, love, celebration at our successes and consolations and advice when we were low. The stories mirrored those of my siblings because my mother displayed the same unconditional love, affection, understanding and inclusion for all her family members. She was a bright light in each of our lives. We went back to the house and celebrated Mom over one of her favorite meals. We told more stories, fought about politics and made plans to see each other for the holidays.

Acadia National Park

After my family left, I needed a good dose of support and love from my chosen family. Friends from Chicago arrived in Maine as I spread the last of mom’s ashes.

The trail we hiked in Acadia led us along cliffs and wind-bent pines. The ocean was a broad blue canvas below, dotted with boats and gulls.

When we reached a tree nestled between two halves of the same boulder, I knew I had reached the spot to say my final farewell.

I stepped between the rocks, which shielded me from the sun. I took out the bag of ashes. It was almost, but not quite, empty.

It felt strange to think about my mother and be in a place she never got to see on her own. Then I realized she was present and watching me share this moment with her.

This time I scattered the ashes in silence and said goodbye to my mother’s physical form for a last time.

That afternoon, we ate dinner in town—lobster rolls and blueberry pie. Mom would have loved that meal.

Later, I stood alone on the porch of the rental house, listening to the ocean, my hands in my pockets and thinking of Mom’s life lessons. Mom had taught me that home was never just a place—it was people, and moments and memories.

She had never made it to Maine.

But now, as the storm clouds gathered again to bring a long, steady rain to Maine’s coast which would soak mom’s ashes into the soil, I thought how much Mom would have loved this trip, surrounded by her family, making new memories, telling old stories, laughing, cooking, hiking and being in nature. Slightly sad that Mom is now a memory, slightly proud of a “job well done” and joyful that Mom would be proud of this journey, I said goodbye one final time.

John Kohlhepp is the owner of A Secure Plan, LLC, an End-of-Life Planning and Death AfterCare company. After the death of his mother, John chose a new career path to help people and families making end-of-life plans and completing the paperwork after a loved one dies. Previously, John worked in progressive politics for labor unions, immigrant rights, and marriage equality.

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