The Scattering

This blog post was guest written by my friend George Hofmann. George writes the newsletter "Practicing Mental Illness."

Down the hill just out of reach beyond a black, cast-iron fence still lays a cigarette, dusty, flicked without thought or respect into a pile of ashes, as if someone chain smoked pack after pack and tossed all thoughts of the past onto the heap. Although it has become the same color as the grey fanning over it and out across the hill it stands out, like nagging thoughts of things you should have done that you can’t push away. Guilt over someone else’s carelessness. That one thing you’ll never escape. All that remains among the remains. This is where ghosts come from.

The cemetery is such a well-ordered space that something out of place just glares at you as it breaks the peace, the silence, of the columns of dead. One after another, immobile, but drawing us back into a timeless past upon which we write the history and we choose what to inscribe on the granite that lasts longer than that history, till a time comes when no one cares anymore, and the earth takes it all back.

The scattering garden is different. It sits upon a hill that would overlook the graveyard, but a circle of trees conceals it. Evergreens, so the place is always shaded and always tucked away. There are two tables of granite off to the side, crowded with the names and dates of those scattered there. A third will be added soon, so many lives have ended and rested on that slope. Birds sing in the trees unseen, and the sound of traffic from somewhere off to the left is overtaken by the wind that makes the trees sway, but does not lift any ashes from the ground. Like the lives lived the ashes scattered here are not unform, at least not up close. But the black iron rail keeps you away, and it all looks the same, except for the time when the bag is held and the arms outstretch and empty all that is left onto the charnel on the hill.

Some would say this is just throwing the dead away. It’s not a remembered place like the ocean or a hiking trail or off the last row of the stadium of a favorite sports team. It’s contrived. It’s a built garden reserved for disposal, but with a bit more dignity and a place to come and visit and reflect. A beautiful place. The flowers and shrubs, the trees and the ribbon of sky that peaks through, and yes, the heaps of cremated remains that dive off deeply onto a patch of exposed earth where grass no longer grows.

Others would say here we don’t throw away the dead at all. Instead, we release them into consciousness where all are joined indistinguishable from one another, in the image of some unnamed god, sent back into the fabric from which we all came. This is a sharp contrast to the rest of the cemetery, with its insistent distinction of one plot from another, standing out alone with markers to prove it, and no doubt of who lies there. The scattering garden is a common grave for people secure with being common people. The ashes merge together with the souls risen and the memories swirl and while the culture may scream “me!” the dead know better. The dead are all one. It is the living that makes each stand out.

The living come in groups to the scattering garden. One is chosen, usually the groundskeeper, to open the urn and empty the bag inside. Overt religious services are rare here, but words are always spoken. Most people think they are more profound, more notable, than they truly are. But in these small groups they are notable indeed. Whereas, like the ash, we all kind of blend together into some secure irrelevance to the broader world, to these groups of loved ones, right up to the point of release, we are spectacular. Today, in the bitter cold, a widower stood with his collar raised and his eyes tearing as he leaned into the wind. His wife did routine work but in new, unusual, sometimes remarkable ways. He spoke of an early mentor who saw the way she did things and said, “you can’t do that. It’s not normal.” He said of his wife, “but she was not normal. She was better than that.” 

The groundskeeper held the bag just above the lip of the hill and poured out the remains gently, so that none would take to the air and cling to the widower’s long coat. Tonight, at home, his wife does cling to him. As does a flake or two of ash just beside the left lapel of his coat. By instinct he raises his arm to brush it away, and then realizes what he is doing and stops. He sits on the bed, falls over, and sleeps in the coat. In the morning he rises, first thought of his wife. On the way to make coffee, as he always did for her, he stops in front of the mirror in the hall. His coat is disheveled and the ash is gone.

As the sun rises the groundskeeper scales the fence and moves across the hill of the scattering garden with a rake. The little piles are evened out and a bit of dirt is mixed in to keep it all down. Midday there’ll be another family. The groundskeeper notices the cigarette and moves to rake it under, then stops. He picks it up and puts it in his pocket to take very far from here. We will be judged by the way we treat our dead and the places we leave them. What we learn from them, and how we bring them back.