river of heart stones

Just returned from a weekend in the Tatoosh Mountain range where Tim and I got married almost five years ago. This time we went there for a different reason: to spread Amalia's ashes in the river just feet from where our wedding ceremony took place under tall evergreens with a backdrop of a river valley and picturesque mountains.

The ceremony was really just a quiet meditation on Amalia's life. Just Tim and I, the flowing water, the surrounding valley and snow-capped peaks.

Everywhere I looked I seemed to find stones in the shape of a heart. I found one immediately after Tim and I got married as well.

I am so glad we picked a place filled with only good memories since Amalia's short life was filled with anxiety and fear, feelings that are hard to shake and separate from my memory of her.

I feared that the spreading of her ashes would hurt so unbearably that I dreaded the whole event. But it turned out to be sad, yet peaceful.

I thought of Tim's grandfather who died not too long ago. He was at our wedding. His children spread his ashes in a river as well and I thought that was such a beautiful way to honor a man who loved nature.

The thought of touching and holding Amalia's ashes in the palm of my hand hadn't occurred to me until Tim asked me. I was going to just pour the ashes straight out of the bag into the rushing stream. Of course it made sense to hold them before letting them go. Her ashes were coarse, white and beautiful, almost like a treasure from an ancient time like special fossils or precious remnants of a mysterious, yet important bygone civilization.


In the eight days that she was alive we didn't really get to know her. She was an infant, straddling two worlds: the one we know and the other world beyond. We never heard her voice as her vocal chords never made a sound. But she did open her eyes and gazed at us. Something I wrestle with is how much of who she was is ascribed to her by me because there was so little to go on from her side. Her presence and message, if there ever was one, was a true mystery and I am trying to tease out who she was separately from my own fears and demons that her death made me have to confront. Honestly, I am not sure if that is at all possible. But one thing I know is that now I have a nice memory associated with her: the moving river, still mountains, and silent heart-shaped stones.