Sunday Scribblings: Pilgrimage

Every now and then I come across someone's Sunday Scribblings and think "hm, maybe I should do that sometime." Well, it's Sunday night, and the topic is Pilgrimage, and I have been thinking abut that very thing. Serendipity.

I've spent most of my life 3,000 miles away from my hometown, and last visited there in around 1982. Now I'm living, probably temporarily, only about a 6-hour drive away. So while we're here I'd like to take my kids to see my old home: the house I lived in as a kid, my church, the old cider mill (which is still in business), and some of the surrounding area, including Niagara Falls.

I'd also like to bury my parents' ashes there. They are currently residing in an urn in my possession. My sibs and I have talked off and on over the past 7 years, trying to decide what to do with them. Scatter them in the Pacific Ocean? Bury in a cemetery - but where? No one lives in any city with any connection to our folks anymore. Our Dad's first choice was to be scattered over the city of Reno (he liked to play the slots) from a small plane (he used to fly), but that seemed expensive and impractical, if not possibly illegal. Throughout all the dithering, I've held on to them.

Now, I'm thinking about taking them to my, and their, hometown to be buried there. The sibs can come out, and maybe we'll reconnect with some long-lost cousins too. After a brief ceremony at the cemetery, we can all go to Niagara Falls, just like when we were kids. (My brother would like to send the ashes, urn and all, over the Falls, but I am pretty sure that is illegal not to mention impossible - or impossibly dangerous - to do.)

I figure that the way we manage things like this, it'll take a year to plan, so I'd better get on it now.

I think that would count as a pilgrimage.