The Burial

Louise's Body, wrapped in two bed sheets that were my mother's, lay waiting in a plastic tobaggan for burial this morning.

We buried her sister by ourselves last fall, but sanity made a brief appearance and prompted me to call a person I could always count on in a pinch, the father of my oldest, "the boy who lived in the Tree".

He was in the midst if Mother's Day obligations, and told me he would be here in a hour and a half or so.

We did our morning chores and picked a site in the pet cemetary.

Typically I use a bottomless supply of dried roses to sprinkle in the grave and the sheet-wrapped body, but the last interrment in November of Saint's Cherokee had cleaned me out.

So we went on a flower gathering mission with a couple of wicker Easter baskets. Every Dandelion, every white and blue violet, springs of just opening bleeding heart, led to handfuls of spearmint and peppermint and beebalm, fern fronds, horsetail, pine fronds, fir tips, the tender red maples leaves just growing...

We started on the grave, clipping roots and gathering handfuls of duff after first raking a spot clear.

Suddenly "The Boy who lived in the Tree" showed up. I had been unable to contact him, and he had passed his father enroute...Sweet Louise had been his dog...

He placed his lovely Mother's Day bouquet to the side in the woods and started helping dig the grave. By the time his father showed up, we had hit a major obstacle-and enourmous rock in the center of the grave just below root line.

We lengthened the grave at the other end, and I started backfilling above therock. All of us dug and dug-Louise was a big dog, even though I tucked her in last night, before rigor set in.

The little Willow took the job of rock grubbing, giving us time to pause every few minutes when she leapt unannounced after a rock for the top of the grave.

ONce the grave was dug, we dropped sprigs of pine and fir and mint for an underlayment, and The three adults lowered her body in place. Then we sprinkled the gathered flowers and herbs over the top of her sheet-wrapped body.

I desperately wanted a smoke at this point, which would have included a walk to the house. I choked up briefly trying to say a few words, and decided I would go through without the smoke, and we filled her grave in.

We had not found enough rock in digging, but I had several choice piles of rose and smoky quartz that I had gathered last year for some masonry project. They all went to fill out the grave, and the little Willow finished with silk flowers from her craft supply, and the little Firebird finished in with the clamshells I found earlier in the week.

Rest in Peace, Louise.