THE CHIME TREE

Because Susan needed a ride to AWOL, and because Kris’ Beetle would be a bit cramped for 3 Broads with all their stuff, and because I happen to have access to our Subaru that day, this field trip was done by 3 (not 2) Broads & 1 Subaru (not 1 Beetle).

After our wonderful AWOL meeting in Mililani, I asked, “Where shall we go to now?”  Not having been trained to lead us like Beetle does, Subaru did not move until Kris said, “How about Mililani Cemetery?”  Brilliant.  Kris was obviously channeling Beetle!

The reason why Mililani Cemetery is special to us is that in 2010 Kris and I had attended the funeral there of one of our early AWOL members, artist Ela Zapf.   

Walking back to the car after the service, I heard a tinkling noise and discovered that Beetle was parked by a tree that was hung with chimes.   

Whoever did that created something magical! The sweet sound of chimes spread an air of comfort and reminded us of the young children and little babies buried there.  

This time we were there the day after Mother’s Day and we found the cemetery dotted with bouquets of fresh flowers and balloons saying, “Happy Mother’s Day!”

Besides flowers and balloons, there were other offerings as well:

I may as well tell you here about my plans for what to do with my ashes.  Hopefully I will have plenty of time left yet because I need some time to prepare a large number of small art bags to hold little plastic bags.  The idea is to fill each little bag with a tablespoon of my ash.  I swear if I didn’t have to be dead for it, I would do it myself to save everyone the trouble.  All of you will be invited to take at least one little bag of ash, but preferably more.  Please spread the ash of one bag wherever you want.  Then send the other bags to friends who live in other places around the world.  Ask them to please spread my ash wherever they wish.  This will give the post office some work and I’ll be truly, in death as in life, all over the place.  

Oh, and hang a chime somewhere... anywhere... for me!