This year I’m especially excited for Christmas, for the first time in awhile. Let me give you an idea why ….

Christmas 2008 – Found out my father had cancer a few weeks before. We didn’t decorate and all of us went to the beach.

Christmas 2009 – Gregory died 8 months before, and my Dad died Dec. 21st. Christmas was cancelled.

Christmas 2010 – I was forced to leave my home and move with less than 30 days by the probate court. Screw the holidays.

So this year has been a lot better in many ways. I’m settled in at the lake, I got a new Jeep, I’m in school, I’m hanging out with friends and family more. Except for the return of my cousin’s cancer, things aren’t too bad.

I’ve been excited about the holidays for the first time in awhile. I decorated for fall and Halloween, and I have been itching to get the Christmas stuff strewn about the house. I even bought a brand new sparkly silver tree, even though I’ve always gone with the traditional green tree. I usually don’t want to decorate until after Thanksgiving like a NORMAL person, but this year I WANT IT RIGHT NOW. I blame that damn Pinterest. 

Last night I decided to cull through things and see what I would use and what I’d take off to the local shelter, and of course, in the first box I opened, was what could have been a land mine.

Nestled between the Yankees ornament we got in 2007 and various Auburn ones, there it was……

Well, Scrooge.

But you know what? It only lasted for a second. Instead of curling up into a ball, I smiled. I picked it up and remembered how excited Gregory was when he saw it at Lowe’s, just a few days after we got married in 2006. How he picked it up and put it in our cart and said that technically that year wasn’t our “1st Christmas”,  but it was our first one with me as his wife and he wanted us to remember it.

So this Christmas, like all of the ones before, I’ll remember. And that will be the first ornament to go on the tree.

Life goes on, and it’s time to celebrate again.

I hope you can too.

I woke up the other morning and immediately looked at Gregory’s urn, which was on top of a dresser in my bedroom, surrounded by photos and candles. Kind of like a weird shrine to my dead husband. Complete with incense.

I’ve been wondering what to do about Gregory for some time now.

The first thought that crossed my mind that morning was “it’s time”.

All day the thought nagged at me. “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.” On the treadmill. In the pool. In front of the t.v. It was like a ticking in my brain.

I always thought it would be some special date, an occasion, a day when I would wake up to jaybirds whistling a tune and bunnies hopping in unison across the grass in a little jig. Or maybe that was just a movie I saw once. Whatever.

I never thought it would be some random Tuesday.

But it was.

On this random Tuesday, somewhere the calendar of my mind hit the “it’s time” reminder.

I moved the urn around the house that day a few times. Picking him up, setting him down. Opened it, looked inside like I’ve done a million times. Like he’d magically pop out like in I Dream of Jeannie. Never worked before, dammit. Why can’t life be more like t.v?

Late that afternoon I put one of the little urns I had into the big one. And like I did right before they took his body to be cremated, I put a note and some pictures into it as well.

I closed the top. The ticking got louder.

Without a plan, I picked up the urn, a bottle of champagne and the keys to the boat. On the way to the boathouse I picked four hibiscus blooms from the trees on the porch. Gregory loved hibiscus.

I took the wild animals with me for moral support. For some reason I though G would like that. All of us going for an afternoon boat ride, like we used to.

I took a slow ride around to where Cargile Creek meets the main part of the lake. He always liked it there. Our deck looks out over it, and you can see the sun rise on one side in the morning and the sunset on the other. I knew it was perfect.

There wasn’t anyone around but us, and the buzz of a random boat somewhere.

I put the ladder out and sat down with his urn on the edge of the boat and even though I know it’s not really him in there, just his body, I talked to him for a few minutes.

I slipped into the water and for a few minutes just floated there watching the sun sparkle off the lake we both love. I knew it was time.

And then I kissed him and let him go.

There were no flashes of light, no thunder, no wailing and gnashing of the teeth.

Just silence. And peace.

I left the flowers in the spot and then, I drove away.

I drank the champagne and took a long ride around the lake.

I cried a little, but I also smiled a lot.

I knew it was time.

And I think he would be pleased.

Lately, I’ve been wondering what to do about Gregory.

I don’t know.

Let me be more clear, what’s left of Gregory. Every day, I walk by the urn containing what’s left of his ashes. Along with the two little urns containing some more of him.

Most days I don’t even really think about it, I just pass it on by. It’s taken it’s place in my home along with all of the other knick-knacks, doo-dads and dust collectors I have amassed over the years. It just contains person dust. Gregory’s not really in there, just what’s left of his body, pulled from some crematorium.

The first months without him, I picked up that urn and talked to it, washed it with tears, hugged it. I may have even fallen asleep holding it once or twice. I romanticized the notion that it was him, he was still with me. Oh man, was I emo girl. Up until a few months ago, I even carried a little urn with some of his ashes in it. But as the months, now years, have gone on, I’ve moved forward, and with that momentum the questions of “what to do with Gregory” have begun to surface.

Do I always want to be that woman with her husband’s urn on a shelf? In her purse?

I don’t think so.

Do I bury him next to my father, where his ashes lay in a plain wooden box provided by the funeral home ? So I can go visit both of their headstones at a place they really aren’t ?

I don’t think so either.

So what do I do with him?

I’ve spread some of his ashes at the places he loved, the Gulf Coast, New Orleans, the Chesapeake, a little here, a little there. Part of them are in my tattoo, and more of his ashes turned carbon are in some jewelry I had made. I also offered to divide them between my step-kids, who didn’t want them. So now what?

What do I do with Gregory?

I’ve had fleeting thoughts of taking a bottle of champagne, sitting on the dock and dropping him down at some magical hour like sunset or during an eclipse or some equally romance novelesque type of time.

Is that good enough? I know for him it would be, he loved it here. But to me it seems kind of anticlimactic, just a splash and he’s gone? Where is the guy playing taps? The seagulls crying overheard? In someone else’s movie I guess.

But am I ready to turn what’s left of my husband into a permanent anchor of sorts?

I don’t know.

Do I mix him with Quikrete and make a place out of him? A stepping stone? A fountain? A ridiculous idea I know, but when one sits and stares at something long enough, strange ideas pop out like mushrooms in a damp field.

What to do with Gregory?

I don’t know.