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The Box

Mike Schneider

Memorial Day

    I wear a uniform for work so the first decision I make every morning doesn't come until I hit the kitchen, where I choose between Starbucks Vanilla, and Green Mountain Breakfast Blend Decaf. Today being Memorial Day it's not even a contest-decaf for sure. One of the busiest days of my year, I will have no problem staying awake as I spend the morning checking fishing licenses of the overflow crowd at Findley State Park, a couple miles south of Wellington. Or in the afternoon when I drive to the public boat launch at the hot waters up in Lorain, on the south shore of Lake Erie, to check the licenses and creels of holiday anglers as they trailer their boats before heading home with their catches of walleye and freshwater perch.
    It's days like tomorrow, when processing today's citations, that I depend on Starbucks for assistance. Paperwork has bored me from day one. Now, after four decades on the job, it's a sleep aid I swear would cure the worst case of insomnia any doctor ever treated.
    Woods, fields, and water, they never make me sleepy. Watching squirrels jumping from tree to tree, white-tail deer bounding across fields, or an excited kid showing me his first largemouth bass or walleye, these things have kept my interest piqued for 40 years, would probably do so for another 40 if people lived that long.
    When I go to the garage and get in my car I see the box. It is sitting, unceremoniously, at arm's length, on the oldest shelf in Wellington, a tube of rose dust on one side, a can of wheel bearing grease on the other.
    Well, not really the oldest shelf in Wellington but the shelf made of the oldest lumber. I scavenged it 38 years ago when the oldest wood frame building in town was razed. A small commercial structure probably no more than 15 feet across the front, it sat across the drive from the police station. The village fathers bought it to tear down when it became necessary to make additional parking spaces for police cars. At the time it had been serving as a secondhand store for a local charity. Today some of it provides a home to various items in my garage, most of them modern day snake oils to cure the ills of lawns, gardens, and vehicles.
    Plus the box.
    The box measures 10 x 5 x 6-7/8 inches, weighs 6.68 pounds. I weighed it on an electronic delicatessen scale my brother gave me when Peg and I were selling on Ebay years ago, weighing and mailing lots of packages. He came by it when the supermarket where he worked purchased new ones. The box is decorated with white and silverish gray stripes. It looks very much like the box Wight Jewelers used to hold a piece of Russian cut glass I bought Peg for an anniversary gift early in our marriage.
    For three years I afforded it somewhat higher status, keeping it on one of those very sturdy sets of metal and pressed board shelves that run $75 to $100, you put together with nothing but a hammer, and can hold up to 2000 pounds. At that time I had it surrounded by liquor bottles-Cutty Sark, Beefeater, Peppermint Schnapps, and 10 others, all standing like solemn, loyal soldiers guarding the tomb of the empress. Peg enjoyed a drink once in a while, maybe once a month, if that, loved having a wide variety of spirits from which to choose. In 33 years of marriage I never saw her drunk, and can count the number of times she had two drinks on my hands and still have fingers left over. I liked having the box surrounded by her sentries. Psychological symbolism, I suppose. Then I sold the shelves at my annual garage sale three years ago, moved the box to its present location. Which also has a certain degree of symbolism, as we were part time antique dealers for 25 years. Crude as it is (Peg would've said primitive) she took pride in having a shelf made of what she considered locally historic lumber, pointed it out to everyone who ever came in our garage.
    When we met I never envisioned spending 33 years with her, or even 33 minutes. My buddy, Clem, and I had stopped one hot summer evening at Wilczak's for a cold brew. It was a quiet, friendly, safe watering hole compared to a couple others in town that drew more boisterous crowds that were too often prone to fighting.
    Clem left early that night. I was nursing my second beer when Peg and her friend, Sarah, sat down at the table next to me.
    As soon as she made contact with the seat Sarah began pouring her heart out to Peg, and anyone else within earshot, about what a cad her husband was. He had cheated on her numerous times, now she was going to divorce him, despite having two kids. An air traffic controller at the FAA en route facility in Oberlin, she said he made plenty of money to pay alimony and child support.
    'All men should be castrated! Lousy bastards!'
    'They should,' Peg agreed. 'They really should.'
    After listening to 10 minutes of half the world's population being thrown into the garbage can of humanity for the sins of one, I finally couldn't help myself.
    'Hey, we're not all like that. Give us a break.'
    They laughed, somewhat uneasily, and we had a nice conversation for the better part of a minute, until Peg asked what line of work I was in.
    'I'm the new Lorain County game warden.'
    'Really?' she said. 'A rabbit sheriff? Am I supposed to be impressed?'
    It went downhill from there. I left.
    Then one day at Christmas I opened the door of Ben Franklin's for a woman coming out, hidden behind a stack of boxes so high she couldn't see where she was going.
    'Thank you,' she said, and promptly tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, all her merchandise crashing to the ground.
    'Let me help you,' I said as we both bent down to pick up her things. That's when I saw her face.
    'Oh my god,' I thought. 'It's the bitch from the bar.'
    But this time she was much nicer, actually engaging. We talked for a time at her car, maybe 15 minutes, but it wasn't nearly long enough. I asked her out.
    'Sure. Here's my number,' she said and handed me a business card: Margaret L. Lanier, Certified Public Accountant.
    We got married a year later.
    Thirty-two years after that she developed a rare blood infection the doctors couldn't cure, and died with me holding her hand, a week before our 33^rd anniversary.
    'I love you, my wonderful rabbit sheriff,' were her last words.
    I am well past mourning, completed the grief cycle in short time, but for the past six years have grappled with what to do with her ashes. No one in my family has ever been cremated. Parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and all the in-laws. No one. Peg and I also intended to be buried, bought plots in Greenwood Cemetery on the south edge of town. Then a few years before she passed, a MRI following a traffic accident left her claustrophobic. A coffin would be too confining, she said, could not stand the thought of spending eternity in one. Thinking about it sometimes gave her hives.
    However, she did say she might not mind if her ashes were put in an urn, added to my coffin with me holding her in the crook of my arm. The problem with that, and every other thing people do with their loved ones' ashes, is I don't relate to ashes. Or regard them as anything sacred or special. I don't consider those ashes to be my wife any more than I would consider our two boys' afterbirth to be them. They have nothing to do with the woman I loved, spent my life with, and still love. They're just very fine gravel and dust. Gray. Plain. Faceless. If they look like anything familiar it's the stuff in the box where my cats do their business.
    One of my friends and her family scattered her father's ashes from a wharf on the East River in New York City. It had to be very special for them. She flew from California, her mother from Texas, to perform the ritual. She had words with her mom when she wouldn't allow her to keep a few ashes in a tiny memorial urn she bought on Etsy for that express purpose. Made of five different kinds of wood and turned on a lathe, it was beautiful. Expensive, too. Her dad was a Muslim. Maybe that had something to do with her mother's reluctance.
    I've seen the video of Israel Kamakawiwo on YouTube, singing his signature song, 'Over the Rainbow,' while his ashes are being scattered from a catamaran with hundreds of people in the water and on shore, celebrating amid a sail proclaiming, 'Iz lives.'
    No doubt water is a popular place to scatter ashes. But so is land. I've seen people scattering them in a park, at the fairgrounds, on a football field, and other places that play large in peoples' lives.
    For me, though, the plain truth is I prefer the garbage can. When I turned 12 it became my job to shake the ashes out of our coal furnace twice a day, scoop them up and deposit them in a galvanized half-bushel basket with thick brown rope handles, that got carried to the curb every Tuesday, for the rubbish men to pick up Wednesday.
    Our boys would certainly not be pleased if I sent their 'mother' to the landfill, so I'll keep the box around a bit longer. Maybe I can come up with a plan for it.

*
4th of July

    It's another big summer holiday, another day for decaf. Today I'm TDY to Richland County to work the water at Clearfork Reservoir checking licenses and creels. Unlike the 91-acre lake at Findley State Park where I was on Memorial Day, Clearfork is much larger, nearly a thousand acres, and one of Ohio's better muskie lakes. It provides water for the city of Mansfield, is always busy on holidays, and very often loud as it is across the road from Mid-Ohio Raceway where races, time trials, and practice laps can make it sound almost like you're standing trackside cheering on your favorite driver.
    Today as I back my car out of the garage the box is still on the shelf but not nearly as heavy on my mind as it was on Memorial Day, as my life took a precipitous turn between then and now.
    Early in June I began having stomach pains, not low in my intestines but higher up toward the diaphragm. They were quite severe so I called the doctor. He fast tracked me and following an ultrasound of my lungs and liver, biopsy of my pancreas, and an MRI, he gave me the bad news.
    'Stage four pancreatic cancer that has spread to your lungs, Tom. There's no way to sugar coat it, it's not curable.'
    I was surprised but not shocked. I've lived too long to be shocked by anyone dying, even me.
    'How long do you think I have?'
    'I would say between one and three months if you do nothing. Four or five with a rigorous medication program directed by an oncologist.'
    'Not very long.'
    'No it's not. I strongly suggest seeing the oncologist. I can refer you to Dr. Ravidam Patel. He's highly respected by both his patients and colleagues. Ravi can assess the disease's progress, present your options to you with much more clarity and accuracy than I can. In the meantime, talk it over with your family, your spiritual leader, close friends. Like with anything else, talking and getting a cross section of opinions and ideas helps.'
    That was Friday. I spent the weekend pretty much in seclusion. That's how I handle serious issues. By myself. I did a lot of thinking, actually talked to the box. To Peg's ashes. To Peg.
    Like everyone, I've always known life is terminal. What I didn't realize is how much different it is when terminal is suddenly staring you straight in the eye and saying, 'I'm here.' Everything looks different. Values change in an instant. Things that had been important, such as a job, house, bills and so forth, no longer are. While others that were simply nuisances or non-issues before can become your focus.
    Like Peg's ashes.
    Now that I will no longer be their custodian, will not be here to guard and protect them, I must devise a plan for them, and carry it out.
    And a plan for me.
    Should I be buried or cremated? Should Peg be buried with me, as she alluded to? Is that even possible? Could our ashes be scattered together? Mixed together and scattered? Scattered in different places? Scatter her, bury me?
     No matter what decisions I make, soon I am going to be like Peg, whether buried or cremated, dead but having lived. Now when I try to distinguish between a lifeless body in a casket and ashes in a box or an urn, the line is blurry, and I understand why both are referred to as remains.
    Backing out into the street and heading off to Clearfork, I can hardly believe a few moments ago I thought the box is not as important as it was Memorial Day. Obviously, its disposition, and my own, are the only things on my mind. I will probably think about them, exclusively, during the hour long drive down to Clearfork, and again coming home.
    All I know for sure right now is that today I'm going to work. And for the first time in my career, when a friendly fisherman, or family, on one of the boats I check offers me a cold beer, as they inevitably do, I will likely take it. Maybe even a couple. They just might start me down a creative path to solving this problem.

*
Labor Day

    Today I'm assigned TDY to Erie County to patrol the Huron Pier. It's more than half a mile long and provides anglers without boats, or those with boats when the weather is iffy, a viable onshore alternative to take advantage of our thriving Lake Erie fishery. Weather is a greater factor for small craft on Erie than on the other four Great Lakes because it is the shallowest, can get churned up into capsizing waves much faster. If you get caught too far out when a storm rolls in, you're in serious trouble.
    But I won't be there. I called in sick. As the cancer has progressed, the pain has become much worse. Nearly unbearable now, it's to the point where I can no longer hide it. If I'm in pain, people can tell something is different. They see me falter occasionally when walking, or shifting endlessly to find a comfortable position when seated, which is often impossible. When I take the medicine the doctor has prescribed to alleviate the pain, my dullness becomes obvious as I search for the right words to say and struggle to concentrate.
    I did not subscribe to any cancer treatment, declined an offer of hospice care. I saw Doctor Patel only for prescription cough syrup and pain medication. Until two weeks ago, Percocet. Now, morphine.
    Although my time has been rapidly approaching I have told no one. Not the boys, work, neighbors, friends-nobody. The only people aware of my condition are doctors Greene and Patel, and their staffs.
    But I did come up with a plan for Peg's ashes. (Hard to believe I referred to them as 'the box' all those years.)
    Also, a plan for myself.
    Peg is going to spend eternity here, in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, perhaps the greatest unheralded gem of our National Park System. It is the 11^th most visited out of 55, coming in far ahead of better known parks like Mammoth Cave, Mesa Verde, and the Everglades. But it's not a destination. Hence, it is visited mostly by locals, those within 75 or 100 miles, and is not well known outside of northern Ohio.
    Composed of nearly 33,000 acres of the Cuyahoga River Valley between Cleveland and Akron, it's an untouched natural environment where you would never expect to find one, and very much as it appeared when Moses Cleaveland founded the city that bears his corrupted name, back in 1796 while surveying the Connecticut Western Reserve. Mostly forested, when you're here you have to remind yourself you are well within the confines of America's 16^th largest metropolitan area.
    The place where I spread her ashes is well beyond Brandywine Falls, a long way off the hiking trails, in an extremely remote area.
    A year after Jacob was born Peg's older sister, Mary, kept him for a weekend so we could get away for some alone time, the first since becoming parents. While hiking that Saturday we came across a huge beech tree deep in the woods that had to be at least 150 years old. Maybe older. In a truly non-parental moment we made love against its smooth gray bark. I can still remember how special it was. While we sorely needed that weekend, what we needed most that day was home in the nightstand on my side of the bed.
    Welcome Philip!
    After the initial shock we never regretted it, and over the years often talked about that day, from both a familial, and romantic, perspective.
    I never checked if Cuyahoga Valley is one of the National Parks that issues permits to allow people to scatter their loved ones' remains because they never would have approved how I did it, as it involved disturbing the forest floor.
    Last night I dropped off the tools-leaf rake, garden rake, hand cultivator-along the road at the closest access point, which was still well over a mile away. This morning I parked the car in a lot five miles from there and walked, a knapsack on my back holding peg's ashes and one other item. Fortunately, I didn't have to walk far. A considerate lady stopped, gave me a ride, dropped me right at the tools.
    The beech looks as healthy as ever, appears the same as it did that fabulous and pivotal day back in 1984.
    For Peg, I raked the leaves away from an area in front of the tree approximately as big as our queen size bed, broke up the ground with the handheld cultivating tool, evenly spread her ashes over half of it, raked it smooth, then replaced the leaves.
    Always a friend of the environment, Peg's parting gift to the world is replenishing the soil with some of the nutrients needed to maintain a healthy forest, mostly calcium, a smaller amount of potassium, and lesser amounts of a few others. I think she would have liked that.
    As I lie down next to her, my back against the tree's massive trunk, I think about two things, that day we were here 37 years ago, and how my bones will eventually provide the same nutrients as hers.
    First though, raccoons, skunks, opossums, coyotes, foxes, hawks, buzzards, and many lower forms of life, are going to partake of an extraordinary feast: Food for the animals going in, food for the plants coming out, eternity with Peg.

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