When Your Spouse Dies

When Your Spouse Dies
Genesis 22: 20- 23: 20

I know where I want to bury my wife and where I want to be buried. Actually, it’s rather that I know where I want our ashes to be scattered. We spent the first night of our honeymoon in a hotel in Dovedale in England (we could afford only one night), a lovely valley in the hills of Derbyshire with a stream running through it, not far from the retreat center where we first met. After breakfast, in bright sunshine we walked down the valley to a place where there were stepping stones across the stream. Ann was wearing a very short summer dress, white with a blue and green flowery pattern, which she had made. It is as well I can remember the details, because I accidentally threw away most of our honeymoon photographs, but that is another story. We eventually lived for twenty-seven years quite near Dovedale and would sometimes go there on a Saturday or Sunday with our sons, and even have lunch on the hotel’s patio. So I imagine Ann dying here in the United States, and having her cremated, and taking her ashes back to England, and walking by myself down that same lane, and scattering the ashes near the stepping stones, and having tea on the hotel patio; and I hope my sons will scatter my ashes there, too. (Or maybe all that will be reversed, which will be fine.)...