I was feeling like everything that needed to be said today about Heather Mac was already written in Stacy Bias’ post Remembering Heather MacAllister
But then…you know, it’s Ash Wednesday and Pudding Day, two of my least favorite days of the year, so I don’t want to let that go without some kind of recognition.
Blah blah blah.
If you’ve done the Catholic Ash Wednesday thing, you know that when the priest smears a cross of ashes on your head he says “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”
Not creepy. Not at all.
But a priest I used to know in Haiti would add his only little twist to the liturgy. If he knew your name, he’d add it to the pronouncement.
“Remember, Kelli, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Go ahead, try with your name stuck in there.
Yeah, right?
Back in the day when I was in my early 20s, I hated that priest because every Ash Wednesday I hear that same thing echo back and forth in my head.
“Remember Kelli, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
But I don’t mind it now. Ahhhh, dust, that sounds seriously restful. I’m enjoying much of my life, I have a lot to be grateful for and I’m damn sure happy to be above ground.
But when my ash time comes, I hope I can go gracefully. Because I know I’ll be tired. Hell, I’m already tired. As the grandfather of one of the students I work with said “I ain’t afraid of dying because living right is a lot of work.”
Right on.
The other thing about Ash Wednesday and Pudding Day is this:
Earlier this year my therapist pointed out that I still “had a closet full of clothes belonging to Cheryl” Now, don’t worry, my therapist hasn’t been to my house, she was just summarizing, somewhat inaccurately, stuff I’d told her in the past.
Actually I didn’t have a full closet of Cheryl’s clothes. I had more than a full closet’s worth of Cheryl’s clothes AND Heather’s clothes and they weren’t in my closet, c’mon, I’m a New Yorker. I don’t have any damn closets.
No all these clothes of both my dead girlfriends were sitting in containers next to my bed.
Creepy, right? Not as creepy as a Precious Moments coffin. But creepy nevertheless.
So at my therapist’s suggestion I set up operation purge, with the help of people who loved Cheryl and people who loved Heather. When we got to the point where we saw some bare floor it occurred to me that maybe it was time to scatter Heather’s ashes as well.
Heather didn’t really have much of a plan for her ashes, except she wanted them everyplace they could go “all the places that I didn’t get to travel.” And I did that for a while, taking them as far as Haiti, and Montreal and Memphis and Mississippi. But TSA people are not so thrilled with folks showing up with a bagful of gray powder to board a plane.
So I decided to scatter Heather’s ashes at Coney Island because of the freak connection, because it’s a place where working class people go to have fun, and because it’s one of my favorite places in the five boroughs.
I also decided that I should go to a movie on my way to scatter the ashes.
Of course, I forgot that sometimes certain movie theaters like to check your bags if you look like you’re carrying snacks and I, apparently, always look like I’m carrying snacks.
Even as a baby. I totally looked like I was carrying snacks.
When they checked my bag this particular day it was not full of snacks, but it was full of Heather’s ashes, a substance apparently completely unknown to the movie theater security because they called…the real-ass police.
The real-ass police showed up, looking like he was sent from central casting (“we need a New York cop, Irish Catholic looking if possible, need heavy duty NY accent”) took one look at the ten pound bag of gray powder and said to the security guards “really? It’s got fragments of bones” and added “what did you think it was, drugs? 10 million dollars worth of drugs?” The security guard squirmed but Central Casting Cop wouldn’t let up “Who takes 10 million dollars worth of drugs to the movies?”
Here’s Heather and her heart sister looking tough as shit. She would have known exactly how to handle an ashes meets law enforcement debacle.
They gave me a free pass since I was too late for the movie I wanted to see so I had to see Les Mis instead. Between the laughing at the ridiculous overacting and the “your last breath should involve an opera note” death scenes in the movie, and thinking how much the ashes scene IRL would have completely amused Heather, I was in pretty great mood when later the Q train pulled into Coney Island.
Heather would love this juxtaposition of fun and creepiness. This actually looks like our house when we held a hosted a Halloween Party in 2006. Also, this photo was taken a few years ago. But same place anyway.
I walked out onto the beach sat down at the first jetty and let Heather go, with an older Russian couple wearing matching sweatsuits as my only witness. We nodded to each other as I climbed the stairs to the boardwalk.
Later my therapist asked if it felt lonely to do it that way and I answered “no…I don’t no…:” before I even realized how true that was.
My Queen could make even chemo look fashionable.
The thing about loving someone that was so loved by others is even if I so much as whisper Heather’s name, there is a part of me that feels surrounded by her –as she called them “lovetroopers” and there is healing in knowing the loss is not mine alone.