MOM BOMB!!!!!!

I really didn’t like the ending of The Sopranos.  That whole fade to black thing doesn’t provide the closure this old dude needs in his life.  I like things to be tied in a nice little bow for me.  MASH, that was a good ending.  I like closure, like BJ waving at a departing Hawkeye.

That’s kind of where I am right now.  In the process, maybe a little afraid of it, but looking for closure, so I’m going on a trip.  I think, I hope, it will provide a physical and emotional end to feeling Marty’s death in one way and moving to the long term feeling of Marty’s passing.

Marty wanted, and was cremated.  The spoiler here is that a human body creates more ash than one might think.

Anyway, Matt and Erin drilled some small holes and put in some of Marty’s ashes.  From there, Matt and I lit some fuses and we sent her off, green and red and gold streaks exploded across the night sky as Marty’s grandkids and family yelled, “Mom Bomb”.  She would have absolutely loved it.

So….I’m going on a drive-about.  At the first part of October my buddy Skip and I are going to make a drive to all the places Marty and I lived.  We are going to Hillsboro, Paris, Muenster and Lubbock (just in time for a TxTech football game).  

We are also going to Pendaries, New Mexico where Marty’s folks had a mountain home.  She loved that place and how it felt, winter and summer.  Buddy Skip, who loved the broken Marty, is going to take a little of Marty to a National Park and let her rest with the ancients.  We will then head to Colorado Springs where Marty and I honeymooned 43 years ago.  We will end our sojourn in Dalhart, Marty’s hometown.

My goal in this is to reset and restore memories.  I don’t want my everlasting memories to be of Marty lying there in the hospital bed.  I want them to be of sitting in a garage watching the rain in Lubbock.  I want them to be of driving early, early in the morning and having to go slow when I wanted to drive like a bat at of hell as we made our way to the hospital where Matt was born in Paris.  

I want to remember her singing the the Hallelujah Chorus at Sacred Heart at Catholic Church in Muenster and sitting by the pool at the country club in Hillsboro and watching as she stood and led a small Christmas service in Pendaries New Mexico.  I want my everlasting memories to be of Halloween parties, jumping off house boats, and crying and laughing as we delivered kids to college.

 

I don’t know how each of the stops will go.  I don’t know what I’m going to do or say as we cast little pieces of Marty adrift in the all the places that made her the person she was.  It sounds like the right thing to do.  It feels like the right thing to do, I’ll have to let you know if the whole thing turned out as right as it sounds to my ear and if closure, for me, will ever happen.  

 I suspect it will.