Ashes to Ashes

In two hours I climb in my car alone and head up to Big Sur to say my final good-bye to Natalie. There will be 11 of us gathered at the creek at Esalen to sprinkle her ashes. I know most of them only marginally, through Natalie. This will not be a reunion of the people of our youth. It will not, as Jonathan pointed out, be a Big Chill moment.

So I am going to look at this as my moving meditation to someone I love. And I am going to make my car into a traveling shrine to everything I can think of that made Natalie happy. I am going to pack my bags and music, and plan my itinerary, as if I were going to meet here there, because I think that would make her happy. I will be a one-woman caravan of love for Natalie. So this is what I am packing. I am driving the little red mini--which she loved, even if she only drove in it once. I am bringing great music that she loved, Bruce Springsteen, the Indigo Girls, a live Lillith Fair recording with The Water is Wide, Pete Seeger, U2, and all the amazing CDs she made for me over the years. They will be my soundtrack. I am wearing a necklace I made out of a fossilized sand dollar that I found with Natalie at the spit at Stinson, on a perfect day we spent together. I'm also wearing a seashell necklace made out of a heart from Stinson. I am bringing the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, that she had me read to her from in her last two days. I want to understand more purely what she believed. I am going to bring my book of Rumi poems, because they gave her great comfort. I am bringing pastels to draw, and a notebook to journal in. She liked doodling and making art. I am wearing a shirt with a big peace sign, and bringing my Bo 4 Bo '08 T-shirt from our favorite T-shirt guy in Bolinas, Buzz. She would have owned one of these if she knew they existed. And she would have demanded that everyone she met on this trip either vote for Obama, or explain why they wouldn't. I am bringing an old Patagonia sweatshirt that is falling apart because the last time I wore it she said, "I like when you wear clothes I have known you in forever." I will drive to Julia Pfeiffer (if it hasn't been burned to the ground) and hike where she showed me, and I will visit the Henry Miller Memorial Library. I will eat pancakes at Deetjens, because we did that and it always felt magical and perfect and happy.

I will walk the beach alone with her tonight in Cambria, and think what she would want me to say about her. I will jump in the water and look for otters. She loved them.

I will drink red wine and eat a big meaty dinner tonight. She would have approved. We were big strong women who loved to eat. And tomorrow I will stand by that creek and let my emotions wash over me. I will celebrate her life in every way I can, and I will cry from missing her. Nat, if you want to speak to me, I am open to you now. Talk to me on the way up the coast, OK? I am listening...