Digging Up A Grave

That is what I felt like I was doing just a couple weeks ago...

When a loved one passes on, we spend days, weeks, months, years, maybe even the rest of our lifetime looking for signs that they are still with us. We mark places in the world with headstones, planted trees and scattered ashes where we can be reminded of them. A bird, a butterfly, a rainbow... we search for signs to remain connected and we are almost always granted those nudges. In some cases before their passing, a loved one has professed, "after I'm gone, when you see a bumble bee you can know that it is me". More often that not, however, it is the fabrication of our own mind that creates those sources of seeking and naming an otherwise ordinary thing into the person we are missing. I have been on many sides of observing this phenomenon and most recently, unearthed a "grave"...here is what I found.

When my brother Nick lost his battle to cancer in 2011 the desire to keep him alive in parts of this world was experienced by many of those who loved and knew him, and in many different ways. Some got tattoos, some saw red winged black birds, ashes slipped into the ocean, were buried at a gravesite, under a tree and in a backyard fire pit on the night of his funeral. When the tree was planted into the soil mixed with some of his ashes outside our family home, I kept my displeased attitude to myself. Why was I displeased with a such beautiful living memorial? Because... Living things die. What if the tree died a month after we planted it? What if we sold the house? What if the house burned down and took the tree down in flames with it? What if a storm uprooted it? My silent irritation was at the fact that we were creating yet another thing to potentially have to let go of someday, we were creating attachment and the suffering that couples attachment when it is inevitably disrupted. What I didn't realize at the time was, that my judgements were purely relative to my experience, and that until we are faced with the impermanence of something that "matters to us", it is super easy to keep throwing around opinion about what others are doing with their grief. The tree didn't matter much to me. But it turns out, the fire pit did.

It is almost 12 years later. The in-ground fire pit where some of his ashes were poured out amongst friends and some family on the night of his memorial service sits outside a beautiful red barn in the backyard. It has had many fires since that night. It has also been neglected and overgrown with grass at times. A few years ago the house was almost sold, but here we are still. Now, a new project in the barn means a new gravel driveway leading up to it. What I didn't know was that also means the fire pit would be no more.

Once the stakes were driven into the ground marking where the gravel would be poured, out came my opinion. Why would we make the parking area to the left instead of straight ahead or to the right? Even though there was a logical answer, I still didn't like it. And so it was time to dig...

By no stroke of coincidence, I was the one that the responsibility to dig was on (largely by stubborn choice, thinking I could still sway a different outcome). There were large rocks, anywhere from 15-50 pounds each making up the ring around the pit, so step one was to unearth all those and move them. After prying the second one out of the ground, I made one last ditch effort and called Dad - the final say guy for all things property related, and the final say was "no" the plan is set...keep digging. Witnessing the pause and phone call, my guy stopped the tractor to make sure everything was ok. I explained that I was trying to make one last attempt to keep the fire pit and move the driveway instead. Not yet knowing my internal struggle with my attachment to the pit, he laughed at my stubbornness being trumped by my dads bigger stubbornness and went back to mowing, and I went back to digging.

I had no idea how attached I was until the inevitable moment of change arrived. It all began to feel deeply meaningful, the brut effort to unearth the rocks, the heaviness of each rock hoisted into the back of the Mule, the dirt and soot covering my whole body...it was difficult and messy by design - foregoing attachment ALWAYS is.

With the stones out of the way it was time to level the ground. Garden rake in hand, I began pulling years fire pit soot, ash and dirt around to create even terrain. Each time the rake struck a larger chunk of charred wood, I would fish it out by hand wondering how long ago that piece of wood was burned, and was there any part of Nick there with it.

If we had hired someone to do the dirty work, they would have done the work with no other thought about it. After all, it is just moving rocks and raking earth. That is where the relative nature of our experience reveals itself. The fire pit meant something to me, but not to my parents. The tree means something to them, but not really to me. A fire pit, and a tree. That is what they are/were. The emotional labeling and binding meaning to them are what creates something other than what they actually are. Can we see things more for what they actually are rather than our relative view? Of course we can, and this is a pillar in my spiritual practice, and in developing a strong and open mind. For some, this can be wildly freeing, while others might find great challenge with the idea.

When the day was done and I finally shared with my guy the reason for my persistent requests to keep the fire pit, his head and heart sank. He didn't know all of the emotion that was wrapped in. In an instant, he understood. Fascinating, beautiful, compassion. But it was done and I was free. There was nothing to be mournful about. The feeling of a lifted weight that you didn't even know you were bearing is unmatched. An opportunity to recognize an attachment followed by a release, an opportunity to recognize that what we once judge in others is often given back to us in some form to deal with in our own life, and an opportunity to mind what our mind creates is something I wish to all.

Maybe we take this as inspiration to take inventory of all the things we have accumulated that have some deeper meaning to us...practice what it might feel like to no longer have them. When that creates sadness and suffering, there is where we do the work. A fire pit does not harbor emotion, but my mind did. Smile at gentle reminders from those no longer with us, and marvel at our opportunity to experience life unbound.