Just another day...not

Just another August day...or maybe not. I'm on a motorcycle road trip in eastern Canada. It was a trip built on dead people, a wedding, a baseball game, whales, and icebergs. First, just to feel good and continue feeling good, I'm actually meditating on this road trip! I wished I could have fit my meditation cushion, but there was no space, my camping gear taking up much of the limited motorcycle luggage space. Anyway, pillows and other things do fine. The key is to have my coxis higher than my thighs or crossed legs, then likely, no lower back pain! Also, I restarted the big 3+ Dr. Stuart McGill lower back strengthening exercises. Whoop, whoop!

OK, on to the day, which in typical fashion for me actually happened a few days ago. I met my sister, Nathalie, brother-in-law, Chris, their two daughters, Gabriella and Natasha, and Gabriella's partner, Mark in Magog, QC for a mini road trip to scatter the ashes of my mom, who had passed away almost a year ago (Septemeber 24, 2024), in Lake Memphremagog. Please notice the placement of the commas in the previous sentence. When Nat and I were kids, from the ages of around 5 and 6 and for about 8 years, our and our mom's happy place in the summer was a cottage we rented in a place called Plage Southière (now known as Southière-sur-le-lac which sounds much more bougie, and it is), right next to Magog.

It was Friday morning and our boat ride with mom and the family was scheduled for 1-4 pm so I thought this was my time to scatter the ashes of three other family members that I had possession of, my father and his parents. How did I end up with those ashes you may ask, which would be a reasonable ask, is a little weird.

My dad died on April 19, 2020, and it was his wish to be cremated (apparently, a family thing). My brother Richard asked if he could have the ashes, and neither Nathalie nor I had any objections to that. When we were all cleaning up my dad's place a little after he died, Richard noticed that there were two bags in my dad's closet. These bags contained two nice boxes that looked suspiciously like boxes of ashes, especially since they had the names of my grandparents engraved on the boxes. We're a family of super sleuths I tells ya. Not really knowing what to do with our grandparent's ashes, Richard took them home where they've been prominently displayed, I'm sure, alongside my dad's for the last 5 or so years.

When my dad, Isidore (aka Isi or Irv) Swieca, was in death's throes on the second last day of his life, in a fair amount of pain, I would think, and quite delirious, I was with him in his bedroom. He lay there, moving slightly and muttering things. I couldn't understand and felt so helpless, so useless. I just utterted, "Where would you like your ashes scattered, dad?" He had never discussed this with me or anyone in our family as far I knew, so I don't know why I thought that he had given it any thought, or at this really difficult moment could give it any thought. But I forged on, grasping desperately for something meaningful to say or do. No answer, probably no comprehension either, so I offered, "Mont-Treblant? Would you like me to scatter your ashes there?" A nod, I think, I see a nod, a mumbled "sure" even, maybe. I have it then, I have my mission for my dad when he's post dad, post life. So does it matter? Even if you have Buddhist or other religious beliefs, which, for the record, my dad did not, does where you leave a dead person's ashes matter in that sense? Does it mess up the calculation for the next life? I'll leave that aside for now, but, none the less, I wanted to do it. It felt like the right thing, somehow.

My dad loved skiing, tennis, and basketball a lot. Scattering ashes on a tennis court or basketball court might be a bit problematic, which is why I hit on Mont Tremblant, one of his favourite mountains to ski. Fast forward 5+ years, and I've finally gotten possession of Irv's ashes and both of his parents' ashes. For various reasons, including not being able to connect with my brother to get the ashes, the Mont Tremblant trip was delayed a long time, but when my mom passed away, and we started planning our family road trip to Magog, I thought I could instead scatter my dad's ashes at Mont Orford which is only about 10 minutes from Magog. A few months ago I was finally able to connect with Richard again and that's when he asked if I could also take Malka and Albert's ashes (our grandparents, or as we knew them, bobonne and grand-pere) off his hands.

So off I zoom on my motorcycle on this warm, beautiful Saturday morning with three sets of ashes to scatter. I had taken them out of the fancy boxes before leaving Toronto and now had three thick bags of silver-grey ashes in my side cases. The ride up to Mont Orford was nice and twisty, and it took a bit of the weirdness off my mind as I had to pay attention to the road. I was imagining an accident with a whack of ashes all over the road and me and how that might look 🤔. At the end of the winding road, I came to the parking lot and at one end was a trailhead. I found a nice hiking trail and went off the main path to an area that looked little used and untrodden. With my trusty swissie, I carefully cut open the first bag, which had my dad ashes. I made sure there was no wind blowing my way and scattered his ashes onto the ferns and forest floor. I then repeated the exercise with bobonne and grand-pere's ashes and then stood there for a while. I took some pictures and a couple of videos and then hiked back to my motorcycle. It was all a bit weird but nice. I think I had done a good thing and felt pretty good about that.

This post is already too long, so I'll do another one on the whole Magog trip and the beautiful time i spent there with my family, and when we finally scattered my mom's ashes.Read more