Last year, this time, I was back in Minnesota, laying my mother’s ashes to rest in the family cemetery, along with her kitty, who had passed a few months before her. It was the first year I had ever been back to Northern Minnesota gravesite and not consumed by mosquitoes. It was almost like the world said, “O.k., we’ll give you a break because we know this has been hard.”
I had wanted to go back to Minnesota on the 4th of July weekend because when I was young and my family was still alive, we use to go up to Northern Minnesota and Leach Lake. Every year for the 4th of July weekend, we would pack up and head up there for the holiday. My Dad’s family grew up in Northern Minnesota, and we had relatives up there. Probably my favorite relatives.
I made a run of it. I re-visited a lot of the past. It was so weird.
When I got off the plane in Minneapolis and headed south to visit the boarding school I had attended, it almost felt like I was going home and if I just kept traveling, I would be back, and my Mom, my Dad, and my sister would be there waiting for me along with our dogs and horses.
I couldn’t shake that feeling for the first few days. And I didn’t want to. It was nice to believe that I could still go home and find them there.
I didn’t go back to the old farmhouse. I had been back a couple of years earlier. Someone else lives there now, and like my husband and I with our little old house, they had been busy redoing the property. It was their property now with only faint remnants of what had been our property.
I traveled up to Leach Lake. There is an old hotel there, Chase on the Lake that opened in 1922. When my family and I were vacationing there, it was still the same hotel from the 1922’s. The rooms were small and cramped with some sporting bathrooms and others not. The stairs creaked, and the colors were dark.
The hotel was still there. But it had changed. The rooms had been renovated and expanded. Now they were comfortable suits to house families and fun, some with full kitchens and multiple rooms. They had built on to the hotel, and only part of the hotel was familiar. It was much bigger.
I was going to meet my cousin the next day and decided to go on a walk from the hotel to the city park. It was the same walk I would take with my brother and sister when we were less than teenagers. I could remember the cracked sidewalks, every house along the way with their overgrown vegetation and slightly European flair. The houses had gazebos, trellises, closed in porches, all encased in thick layers of shrubs, trees, and grapes.
I remember walking past my cousin’s house. It had been my Aunt’s house. The light was on, and I thought it weird that he hadn’t invited us over. I wanted to wander up the familiar walk to the familiar doorway, that same doorway I walked in and out of a hundred times as a kid. But, I thought better of it. Maybe he needed his space. I’d see him tomorrow.
Everything had changed on the walk to the park. New owners with new tastes had bought these lake view homes. The new owners preferred big, open spaces, not the privacy, and quiet of the previous generation. Trees and shrubs had been cut down and pulled. Now the houses opened up to the street with grass lawns and less shrubbery. The sidewalk was still cracked.
I met my cousin the next day, not at the house. Outside of town at a different place. He had sold the house about a year ago. He had written to tell me about it. He had written to my mother to tell her about it. My mother probably never read the letter or, if she did, couldn’t bear any more loss, stopped understanding things, and tucked the letter away conveniently forgetting about it.
I had come here to honor my mother’s last wishes and put her urn in a grave next to my father. I knew it was a final chapter. I knew I was closing the book on my past. But, I didn’t want to let go.
There weren’t any mosquitos at the gravesite. The site is mosquito heaven where mosquitoes do planned attacks and try to carry you away. The world kept saying, “I know this is hard for you, but you have to let it go now.”
Probably the last straw, the last hope for some remnant of the past was that house. That house that my family and I would visit every 4th of July holiday when I was young. Losing that was indeed losing the past. Now all of it was gone. When I put my mother in the ground, it would all be over, and I had to let go.
No one knows how long your grief will last. Honor and accept that pain of losing those you love.
You know, our Independence Day is really about honoring those who sacrificed and fought for us so we could have the freedoms we have today. How appropriate. How appropriate that I would visit my family and lay my mother to rest on Independence Day honoring her last wish and my family for all that they did to allow me the life I have.