#496 Ashes- Lucia Perillo
Tim’s father has died and it’s his job to take care of the
ashes. His father was intently unsentimental, but Tim finds himself taking
stock of his own life and his strained relationship with his dad. He remembers
his father coming to visit and taking him to the trails he helped build as a
Forest Ranger—and he remembers his father being supremely unimpressed.
“A water bar was an insignificant thing, Tim realized, but
its worth was easily measured: you kicked it and right away whether or not it
would hold…they were responsible for nothing less than the shape of the
landscape, for the sides of the mountain staying up…he wanted his father to
understand this, but Sam hadn’t, or Tim hadn’t tried hard enough to explain.”
So the thing Tim is most proud of, the most tangible thing
he has done, hadn’t met to his father’s approval. The thing his father was
impressed with, briefly, was an old growth tree six feet wide, so that’s where
they spread his ashes. I liked the symbolism of the bottle of whiskey saved
until Tim got married—wasn’t so hot on the symbolism of the kneeling at the
end.
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