HUELLA VERDE

annual Arizona visit. It was a place
I knew I’d be happy to come back to
again and again.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLFLADI/ISTOCK
THE TRAIL SOON LEFT the grassy,
wide-open space behind and
wound through a slickrock maze,
the way marked by rock cairns,
before dropping down below the
rim. After a few twists and turns, I
stopped at a point where the trail
ran alongside a long, sheer drop.
Mesa Arch Off to my left, I could see nothing
but canyon country: corrugated
red rock to the horizon. On my
right, the trail tucked into a broad
horseshoe fold in the cliff face. If I kept going, I supposed I would
switchback down that fold until I reached the valley floor. The
wind was blowing against my back as I stood near the edge and
looked out; that was good. I wanted no mishaps with windblown
ash flying back at me today.
It seemed like there ought to be some ceremony to the event, so
I picked a skinny red desert flower and tossed it in the air. Caught
up by the wind, it drifted along the cliff edge at eye level for a long
moment before dropping away, out of sight.
I pulled the small, maroon velvet drawstring bag out of my
backpack. Inside it was a smaller Ziploc baggie, filled with a fine
gray dust that shimmered, faintly metallic, in the light. I walked
as close to the drop-off as I dared and waited for the wind to pick
up strength. As I wondered how best to get the ashes out of the
bag, I had a vision of accidentally tossing the baggie with the ashes
still in it, littering the park with plastic in my attempt to honor my
mother.
(Something I hadn’t expected about grief and grieving: how
many moments of unexpected comedy it forced you into. The little
things seemed funnier when everything else was sad.)
Finally I held the bag out straight in front of me and jerked my
arm up and forward, squeezing slightly with my fist. The ashes
came out in a puff—once, twice, three times. Like the flower, each
burst of dust swirled on the currents in front of me before vanishing.
Soon, sooner than I’d expected, the bag was empty and the
ashes were gone.
I tucked the baggie and the velvet bag back into my backpack
and sat down on a large rock nearby. I had expected to cry—I’d expected
this moment to be wrenchingly sad—but I felt calm. I was
satisfied with what I’d done. I had cried my tears and said my goodbyes,
over and over again: on the long sequence of flights home,
during the days spent lingering at the hospital, in the minutes
when we waited at the bedside for her life to run its course, at the
funeral and in the weeks and months afterward.
This, today, wasn’t another goodbye. It was a promise to return.
Eva Holland lives in Canada’s Yukon Territory. She has written for
Pacific Standard, AFAR, and Smithsonian Magazine.
WENT HIKING WITH
THE WHOLE FAMILY.
STUMBLED UPON
A HIDDEN BEACH.
LISTENED TO THE
SOUNDS OF THE
OCEAN.
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