Scattered remains

Took Zen for a late afternoon walk around the village. Bumped into a woman standing by the railing on Main Street, looking down at the beck. 

She acknowledged me, so I stopped and stood next to her. She told me she was there to scatter her mum's ashes, then proceeded to open a stiff white paper bag and shake it over the railing.

I watched her mum's colourless powdered remains float away from us in the wind and fall into the water below. It was all done with such a casual air, like she was emptying garden clippings into a waste bin.

Then she turned, gave Zen a big smile, and said, "You're a cute thing. I'm just saying goodbye to my mum." Then she shrugged and was on her way.

She probably hadn't expected a smiling baby to be there as she gave her dead mother back to the earth. And so this private goodbye suddenly turned into a cycle of life moment shared with two strangers. Yet it didn't feel like we were intruding; it somehow felt like we provided some comfort and context that life goes on.

She, it must be said, was no spring chicken, so her mum must have had a good innings. And she seemed to be taking it all in her stride while revisiting her childhood home. (She said she now lives in south wales, pointed to a house across the brook that her mum and dad had built, and remarked how much the village has changed since she'd lived there. though it's such a small place, surrounded by farmland, that it's hard to imagine it being anything more or less than what it currently is.)

We walked on. It got dark. The wind picked up. Leaves blew from the trees and danced in the air, much like that lady's mum's ashes. The Earth scattering its own dead remains.