Stump Study

[steepholm]

On the way back home this afternoon I stopped at Otterbourne Wood to pay my respects to my father's ashes, which just now are all bluebells and moss.

Comments

[kalypso]

That's lovely, and I imagine he'd appreciate it.

[steepholm]

I think so too - he was always very ready with his camera himself.

[sovay]

On the way back home this afternoon I stopped at Otterbourne Wood to pay my respects to my father's ashes, which just now are all bluebells and moss.

His memory for a blessing. That's a beautiful transformation.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

What a tranquil place. Beautiful. It looks as if it smells really good too.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My camera doesn't have that feature, but yes it does!

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Lovely. Just lovely.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It put me in mind of these lines from a poem I wrote for him a while ago:

What death has made of you, I do not know.
Perhaps you are the vastest star,
Or that still-vaster darkness where it burns,
Or soil, or stem, or now a spreading tree,
Or that thin web which from the sallow leaf
Extends. These mansions tenanted,
Where shall I seek you on the Greek Kalends?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is just stunning!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

When I saw its lavish greenery, I thought you might like it!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It's my desktop picture right now!

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, how lovely! A metamorphosis.

Nine

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes - and no monstrous one.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Woodlands are so beautiful in the spring. What a lovely place to remember your father.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

He didn't choose the place, but I think he would have approved it.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Such beauty.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I can think of many worse forms of resurrection!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is surely one of the most beautiful places in the whole wide world. What a lovely spot for a final resting place.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

When he died, I gave money to the Woodland Trust to preserve this acre in perpetuity, so I think of it as "his", though not in the sense of ownership.

We scattered him there on a later summer day in 2005, then walked to The Otter for a pub lunch. It was only later that I came in Spring and discovered the bluebells.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's as if the bluebells were his gift back to you.