Closure of a sort

Last night as I was pondering the universe, like you do, I finally felt a sense of closure regarding Jerry.  The whole situation of mixing his ashes with the composting materiel and the placing of the mixture in the hole where the tree was planted somehow seemed surreal at the time.  Last night I bid adieu to my old buddy Jerry and his Jerryisms of misspeak.  My favorite Jerryism was when he spoke about his mother who was in the hospital at the time and he said "she's stabled but she still is a little horsed".  Or his reference to his antihistamine at the time, Trinalin, as Trinidad.   His love of a few "questionable sites" on the internet.  The ones I had to shout over as I entered his apartment to check in on him.  And, finally, that fateful day I came home, full of good news, and checked in on him only to find his lifeless body on the floor.  That was horrific for me.  And I supposed for him as well.  He had been fading, his health failing, which prompted me to check in on him daily to make sure he ate and had enough beer and cigarettes to last him for a few days, but I never expected the final view of him, laying there on the floor, looking rather peaceful, I must say, in repose, in death.  Now I have his memory and a visible sign of his life in a beautiful sugar maple tree near Beaumont Tower across the street from the library.  A tree I think I will visit in a few minutes just to see it and tell him a goodbye that felt incomplete a few days ago.  Reverend Percy did an outstanding service and I keep reflecting on some of his words of solace.  A living testament to Jerry's commitment to MSU.  I feel like I need a few moments alone with the tree and Jerry to really say goodbye.  It seemed easier with my parents.  The closure I sought with my dad came the day of the funeral.  Somehow seeing his body wrapped in a shroud laying there was numbing but also final.  That service was quick and to the point and we said our goodbyes.  I did have a nice number of family there with me and paid for a luncheon post service.  That was awkward but no one wanted to come to the old house in Detroit so we moved from Ferndale for the funeral to Southfield for a luncheon, where I sat with his brother and my cousins and we broke bread.  I was numb but cognizant of the fact of his passing.  With Jerry, until this week, the process seemed incomplete with me moving him around the condo, giving him to Toni when I moved, moving him to Sans Souci for a visit, moving him to the Percys' and finally opening the box containing his ashes and mixing them with the compost.  That, too, was numbing.  But last night it seemed finally done.  He is at rest with the earth and part of the living earth and, as such, his memory lingers on.  I rarely get to Ferndale now to see my parents, really only when there are funerals in the family.  But I do stop at their graves and leave a pebble or two as a token of my visit.  I may place a pebble near Jerry's tree today and really say my final goodbyes.  But I think after daybreak I will go out to the tree and just commune with nature and Jerry and misspeak myself in remembrance.  As Jerry might opine "this too shall past".  Past it has, as well as passed.  Goodbye old friend.