During the summer of 2018, when Elizabeth and Sutton began their fifteen-month musical tour, Ruth and I were members of their groupies.  We followed them around the State to catch a few of their shows.  We took several side trips, especially in northern Michigan, as we enjoyed the beautiful scenery and local attractions.  On one such trip we stopped at the Knot Just a Bar in Omena.  It’s on the Leelanau Peninsula and the shores of Grand Traverse Bay.  The deck offers the best dining water view in the region. We stopped there for lunch.

It’s funny what I remember about that stop.  We shared a spinach dip appetizer and a wonderful cherry crisp dessert.  The crisp was the best I’d ever eaten. Ruth had a coke, and I had a Stroh’s Beer.  It was originally “fired brewed”, whatever that means, in Detroit.  It’s not a particularly great beer but it was a nostalgic look at my past.

After lunch Ruth explored an art gallery across the street from the bar.  She looked at art while I looked at novelty t-shirts in the bar.  Both explorations were how we rolled.  While I could appreciate art, she loved it.  She marveled at the talent that people had.

One of the artists, Laurie Shaman, created ceramic pieces using a “slab technique” that Ruth admired.  She thought they captured beautiful items found in nature.  She examined the work very carefully and decided they could be functional as well as beautiful.  Her exact words were, “I’ve found the urns that the kids can save my ashes in after I’m cremated.  They’re designed to be hung on a wall and they have a hole in the back where they can load my ashes.”

My reply was a bit direct.  “The kids are not going to want your ashes hanging on their walls.  That’s just crazy.”

When the kids made their second tour around the mitten in the summer of 2019, Ruth and I returned to Omena and the Knot Just a Bar.  The cherry crisp wasn’t quite as good, but the Stroh’s tasted just the same.  Ruth visited the gallery again and confirmed her original observation.  The pieces of art would make wonderful urns for her ashes.  This time I poked my head inside.  While they were beautiful, I didn’t think the kids would want her ashes adorning their walls.

Ruth died a year ago today.  It was a Tuesday and I made three calls to the kids on the worst night of my life.  Over the next several hours my California kids headed to Michigan.  Mike arrived on Wednesday night and Elizabeth and Sutton shortly after.

It didn’t take long to decide that Elizabeth and I would drive to Omena the following Monday to select the urns that would hold Ruth’s ashes.  We’d honor her wishes.  I came down with Covid and couldn’t make the trip.  Elizabeth went solo and made the selections by herself.  I asked her to select five: one for her and her two brothers and two for me.  One would stay in Michigan and the second would go to Florida when I returned.  In the end, she bought six.  The sixth was for Ruth’s sister, Kathy.

Not all of her ashes went into the urns.  She told me that she wanted some spread at the little cemetery on South Jackson Road not far from our home at Lake LeAnn.   She loved the view across the adjacent farmland, so I honored her wishes. I took it upon myself to spread some on her parent’s grave in Plainwell where Ruth grew up and we first met.

Elizabeth spread some in the Pacific Ocean, so she’d be near her California kids and David spread some at Clark Lake’s Beach Bar where we all first met Lindsay and spent many fun filled hours.

There’s no one right way to honor someone.  We make the best choices we can when they have to be made.  We just wish we didn’t have to make them.

If you Google the Tamarack Gallery in Omena, Michigan, you’ll find this.

“After fifty-one meaningful years, the Tamarack Gallery will close on Tuesday, October 31, 2023. It was started in 1972 by David and Sally Viskochil in a small building near Sugar Loaf before moving the gallery to Omena in 1976. What began as a small crafts gallery featuring ten artists steadily grew into a fine art, crafts, outsider, and folk-art gallery that sustained the art careers of hundreds of artists over the course of Tamarack’s long history. Sally is choosing this year to retire the business as she turns 80 years old.”

I don’t believe there’s any connection between Sally’s retirement and Ruth’s passing.  But I do know this.  If Ruth had waited to pass until November 1, 2023, we wouldn’t have these works of art, and we couldn’t have done as she wished.