View from Above

Flying back from Indianapolis to California today, the plane passed over the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado.

I wanted to look down and see Telluride, Trout Lake, Mesa Verde, but a haze covered the area, and shadow too. The sun must have set down there.

"My mother's ashes are down there," I thought. "I'm flying over the spot where they lie, under the lilac bush."

Last week my brother Bill reported that the red columbines I also planted under the lilac had died. I'm sad that they died... I wanted that spot to look so beautiful, to contain her cherished flowers.

"I wonder if she cares," I then mused, looking down from the airplane window.

And staring out at the billows of cumulus clouds illumined by the setting sun, I realized, "No, she doesn't care. She is so far beyond caring about that little spot on earth where her ashes lie. It's only Bill and I who are tending that spot, wanting the lilac to survive its first cold winter at 10,000 feet, wanting the shooting star columbines to bloom there."

She is so far beyond, but we still care.