Our daddy arrived at my little sister's house in a small, eight pound box. That fact is still strange to me. To think that a human being can be compressed into eight pounds of "ash" and mailed through the United States Postal Service to someone's home is more than I can comprehend, even now. When it is your loved one in that box, it is even more disturbing. Stormi and I were both scared to open the box; we just were not certain of exactly what we would find and we had a difficult time accepting that this small box contained our father. You hear people say, "Oh we scattered my daddy's ashes......", but did you ever think about what that really means? I didn't and neither did Stormi. We knew we had a long road ahead of us, both figuratively and literally, and we knew it would not be easy, but we set off on our journey, positive that Daddy's final wishes would be honored.
We hugged Stormi's husband and baby boy, and left Stormi's house that cold morning, both of us in a peaceful, happy mood. We were going to celebrate Daddy's life and the fact that we have each other. You have to remember that he had been gone for two months by this time and we had worked through some of our grief. We wanted happy memories with our daddy, because the ones we had were so few. So we set out, just me and my sister....and our daddy in a box on the backseat. We sang Daddy's favorite songs as we drove (Just FYI, I sing a wicked "Delta Dawn" ) and took many pictures of touristy things along the way. We stopped at a casino and won a little money (because he would have loved that) and we ate a hot, spicy lunch in a wonderful restaurant in Santa Fe. Daddy loved everything about Santa Fe....even more than I realized at the time, as I had not yet read his writings. We took our own sweet time getting to our destination, because this road trip was, in its own way, our personal memorial service for our daddy and we were determined that we were going to create some good memories with him, even if he wasn't really there. But you know, somehow, he was there. Signs are a crazy, wonderful thing as we have come to realize, and to say we saw signs is a huge understatement.
We stayed the night at a hotel in Taos. The next morning was cold and windy as we headed up to Eagle Nest along winding mountain roads. Eagle Nest is beautiful and peaceful. The lake was still frozen solid and we drove for miles trying to not only find the perfect place to take daddy, but also to muster the courage to open that box for the first time. Finally, after much deliberation, we found a gorgeous place that was peaceful and calm, with a trickling stream edged in ice, running through the area. We both knew without a doubt, that this was a place Daddy would love.
Finally, the time had come to open the box. We sat in the warm car for quite a while, gathering our courage. In the end, my precious, pregnant baby sister was the braver of the two of us, and she opened the box. And it looked like fireplace ash. That is all. Just soft, fine ash. The remains of our daddy.....Not scary at all. Not nearly as scary as he could be in real life when he was drinking and violent. I think the anticipation of opening the box bothered us more than anything.....once it was opened, we both seemed to be a little bit better.
And so, with the box was opened, Stormi began scattering his ashes along the frozen banks of the creek. I took pictures of the area so that we would always remember the places we took Daddy. During the time that Stormi was scattering the ashes, I happened to look up and in the branches of a bare tree sat a beautiful blue bird. I remember thinking how strange it was to see a bluebird at that time of the year when it was bitterly cold. I am sad that I didn't get a picture of it, but we both saw it and commented on how pretty it was with its bright blue feathers against the cold, bare branches of the tree. Little did we know....
We spent a couple of days laughing and crying, taking Daddy places we knew he would love as his final resting place, and making peace with the past. I honestly don't know that we could've done anything more perfect for either one of us or for our daddy. He would've been so proud of us. I am not entirely sure that scattering ashes like we did is even legal. He would've LOVED that. Daddy liked girls with "moxie" and believe me, it takes moxie to drive for hours through skinny, icy mountain roads and gather the courage to open a box of the remains of your loved one. We had done the right thing and we knew it without a doubt.
A day later we took Stormi's momma with us and met our precious aunt and uncle on Sandia Mountain. Our aunt read a beautiful eulogy that she had written and we scattered more of daddy's ashes. This would have been simply another lovely tribute to Daddy except that there, high in a bare tree, almost 200 miles from where we saw the first bluebird, sat another, exactly as bright and beautiful as the first one. It was winter and it was cold in the mountains......not at all the climate for springtime birds. But there it was, perched right above where we were scattering our daddy, just like the one that had been at Eagle Nest. Perhaps God knew that we needed comfort and sent them to us. Perhaps it was Daddy's way of letting us know that he approved of what we were doing. All I know is that since that time, there have been many other unusual sightings of bluebirds and they have always come at exactly the moment when I was in need of reassurance. The peace that I feel when I see the bluebirds cannot be adequately described. To me, they represent my Daddy and make me feel as if I am being watched over. In death, Daddy seems to be doing what he never could do when he was alive, and for that I am grateful.