Scenes from a Good Friday

October 2, 2020

How do you commemorate the one-year anniversary of your son’s death?

“Any way you want,” said my mother-in-law. (She’s a hospice nurse, so she knows about these things.)

Apparently, there’s no wrong way to do this. When faced with the same question, some people want to grieve their way through the day, looking at old photos and remembering all that’s been lost. Some want to celebrate the day, choosing to remember the joy of a life well lived. Some are still not ready and want rather to ignore the pain for now and plod on like a good soldier.

So, taking her advice, we each made our own days. After mailing off our election ballots (as Mitchell would have insisted), Michele watched a Marvel movie and got a pedicure. Max slept in. Miranda went to a friend’s house. I went to the office.

We reconvened later in the afternoon, though. And we were joined by family for some “festivities.” Mitchell’s death happened on a Tuesday but October 2nd falls (this year, at least) on a Friday. So I called it our “Good Friday” celebration, in honor of another fallen man whose death proved surprisingly…good. Excruciating, but good.

So how did we spend the Good Friday evening?

First, we had Bandanas BBQ. It was Mitchell’s favorite. Honestly, it felt wrong eating ribs without him there. So wrong, but oh so right, especially with that St. Louis Sweet and Smokey sauce. Smell that smoke, Lord. May it be a fragrant offering to your nostrils.

Next, we dedicated Mitchell’s new memorial tree, planted right outside his bedroom window. Bill Spradley of Tree, Forests and Landscapes Inc. recommended a “Scarlet Fire” dogwood. He and his team arrived early Friday morning to install it, leaving it for us to finish. I had planned on planting the tree in Mitchell’s ashes (the “cremains”) so that what (c)remains of his body might return to the earth to bring new life that we could watch bloom every spring. (It’s why I chose a dogwood tree, also known as the “resurrection tree” because of their Easter blooms and cross-shaped flowers.)

However, I learned in my research that plants and trees do not grow well in human ashes. The good stuff has already been incinerated. What remains is too high in alkaline content to bring much life to anything. Killing a tree with Mitchell’s ashes is definitely NOT the point of this exercise.

But this is nothing that environmental science can’t fix. Bob Jenkins from Let Your Love Grow in Wildwood, MO, donated a large bucket of organic mix designed to combine with your loved ones remains to…let your love grow. So late the night before I dutifully poured my 19yo son’s ashes into a bucket of organic mix, stirring them together, chips of his bones blending in with organic peat. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust they say.

Then, after sharing memories of Mitchell that we hope remain as alive as the tree growing outside his window, we each buried our memories underneath shovelfuls of organic Mitchell-mix. Truly, he might have thought this whole thing stupid. But I doubt it. Behind his wit and sarcasm he was a sentimentalist at heart. He loved looking at trees in the fall. He would have loved this one.

Following that, we proceeded to the cemetery behind our house. Yes, we live next to a graveyard. It’s not as eerie as you’d think. I’ve grown quite fond of Lakeview Park Cemetery, and have spent hours walking its roads, reading the names on the headstones, and sitting on stone benches playing my guitar—crying, complaining, and even cursing to God.

Instead of the cursing, though, we lit some Chinese lanterns. (Mitchell would have gotten a kick out of the instructions on the bags, which must have been translated by some Chinese intern who needs to re-take English. See pix below.) The lanterns were hard to light. As my brother commented, “This was easier in Tangled.”

But finally they lit and took flight. I wasn’t sure what the symbolism of this was, other than just looking pretty and inspiring some oohs and aahs. But as they slowly ascended upwards, these floating lanterns formed a constellation that bore a slight resemblance to…the Big Dipper. As we stood there watching these lights fly away, I was reminded of the science fair project Mitchell and I did many years ago. We used small light bulbs and a battery to build a three-dimensional replica of the Big Dipper. He learned that space is three-dimensional, and that constellations look different from different angles in the galaxy. He won first prize and fifty bucks from the astronomical society. I got a memory that I’ll never forget.

Now, I don’t know what angle Mitchell was looking at those lanterns from heaven last night, but if they made a different shape for him than they made for us, I know he understood why. I’m sure all things on earth look different from the view of heaven, anyway.

Eventually the lights dimmed and then darkened completely and landed probably in some distant neighbor’s tree. With everything so dry these days, I was only hoping no trees caught on fire—memorial or otherwise.

Spent but encouraged, we returned to the back yard to roast marshmallows in the fire pit and Be Together. My nephews played basketball on our backyard basketball court. I had painstakingly installed that court 10 years ago so my basketball-loving son could learn to play the game with his brother. He barely got to use it before he got sick. So it was good to hear the ball slam against the asphalt once more.

Eventually we all hugged and they went home, to trudge through another Mitchell-less year. Who knows how many of these we’ll have to get through?

You’ll forgive me if I hope that number is not too many.

Next year we’ll celebrate the anniversary of Mitchell’s passing on a Saturday. That works, too. We’ll call it Holy Saturday. That’s what the early Christians called the Saturday between the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. It was a day of anxiety and waiting. Friday had happened, but Sunday was coming.

That’s probably more apt for us, anyway. You see, we’re through the worst of it. The day we said goodbye to Mitchell was the day the sky went dark and the earth shook. For once I knew the Father’s pain of watching his Son’s body ripped apart by death. That wretched day is behind us. These days are bad but not like that. Mitchell is now buried in the earth, with Christ. Now we just wait, trembling and hiding from death like the disciples did.

What do we wait for? We wait for life. We wait for spring to come, and dogwoods to bloom, and for all the earth to give back its dead, from every corner and from every grave.

Oh Spring, come quickly.

-MRH