"Ashes are stardust"

That is what D tells his 6 year old lovely son G who is running around Prospect Park in his Harry Potter Wizard "Gryffindor" robe, lovingly spreading my stepfather David's ashes around various trees with a wooden spoon he was dipping into the cookie jar with a whale painted on it. I gave G first dibs because he was so enthused. G is sad David died, but somehow he gets it, too. He creates a little altar of twigs and leaves and acorn caps around one little mound of ashes he placed at the base of a tree he just knew had to have some of David's ashes.

The best thing that could have happened today was D bringing G to join us for scattering David's ashes. G asked me if he could do certain things, like place a stick he found that had been painted purple and green over ashes I had placed in the hollow at the base of another tree, one that David's very good friend had chosen to scatter some ashes. "Purple and green are the best colors! They will protect him from evil spirits!"

David had requested in his will that half his ashes be scattered here in the Prospect Park Meadow. I did not know where to place them, and so his close friend (and executor) and I asked some good friends who were with us and had spent more time with him in the park. Once we picked an area, everyone got a chance to decide where to place some ashes, which was G's brainstorm "because there's a lot!" How do kids know everything?

When we all had scattered the ashes, I stood between all the various trees where ashes had landed then turned away from everyone and cried.

David, who had been my father most of all, and yet I had not known it until he died, and how could I not have known it since he came into my life at the time I was G's age, picking up the pieces of some pretty dire predecessors, even though he was picking up his own pieces from Vietnam, and his mother's sudden death and suddenly having to care for his teenage siblings (48 years ago yesterday - on Veteran's Day - which brought him home from Vietnam early - and probably saved his life - at least that is what his sister surmises, and that may be true - not that David would have taken that trade if offered. He went to Vietnam not as a true believer but because he thought it was unfair someone poorer than him who didn't have a college education should have to go in his place. Which may be why he left money in his will for one of his good friends to go back to college, which he is now doing, and appears as a man transformed - someone finding his potential. Another life David saved.)

I am so sad because I let arguments David and I had had get in the way of our closeness when I was back in NYC. Maybe he did, too, but he's dead now, and I'm left alone, knowing I definitely did that. I can never get that time back. No do overs when someone has died.

But D kept saying to G "It's stardust - those are atoms some might have been here since the beginning of time" and he's right of course and his son's joyful sadness was a testament to this belief. And everyone's love. His executor who was in charge of this ceremony said "Julia gets the rest of the ashes, she's his daughter" and that made me cry some more, and I'm crying now of course...

I was at a crystal reiki healing thing yesterday - yes if you had told me even 10 years ago I would go to such a thing I would have been...dismissive. But I did, and I found a crystal there and it had some kind of power and the reiki/crystal healer was saying how crystals are solidified light and they have all the information in them about the universe and the multiverse and I believed her, for whatever reason, and so I planted one of those crystals at the base of a tree that John had done some kind of Taoist thing with that I don't understand, and I don't have to understand, and so that's what everyone was doing, these little rituals, our rituals.

crystal planted in hollow of this tree

Which is how David's ashes - the second half - were spread.

The rest - as I wrote about in September - are in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. Another sacred place.

I may not have known how much love we actually shared and how he was my father - because who the hell else is the person in your life from age 6-53 even if he was gay and our lives were unconventional and someone else came after, another stepfather, Tom, who I also loved very much? He was there when I found writing and theater and all the things, but also the horrible things, too, and so much, and as he did for so many others, he saved me from one of them, and so now when there are terrorist attacks or other scary things, I feel really vulnerable, because he's not there. But I do feel what he was for me now, and in some ways still is, but not here physically, and that does make all the difference.

Watching Last Flag Flying, about three Vietnam Vets reunited for the death of one of their sons in Iraq, I was desperately sad not to share that with him - the heartbreak and beauty and humor of that film. I miss laughing with him most of all, and his pride in me, which when he displayed it made me feel like a star.

So I planted the crystal and watched D's son play wizard and knew David would have loved that, does love that, and the crystal is now at a base of a tree where John dug a little hole where in 10-20 years the tree will grow over it, because we all loved David so much, and as someone said, that tree (a giant oak), was like him, "Tall, large...and sexy."

We all laughed. David would have loved that, too.

This is my NYC life - the one I shared with David - me and a bunch of fabulous gay men - all smart, wildly talented and diverse in every way, and ALL in love with David. Sometimes a small child - like G - who reminded me so much of me at that age in the way he built little shrines out of twigs and such over David's ashes and being the center of adult attention, and that was it, wasn't it, isn't it, all that love and who cares if it looks like something "normal" or now - and happily NOW this is the new normal - all reactionary idiocy aside - in real life, this is the new normal.

And isn't it wonderful.

If I could, of course, I would call David and tell him that right now, and we'd laugh until we cried.