Ashes to Ashes

Mom died in 2004. Dad died in 2017. Only today, in the wilderness above Lake Tahoe that they both so loved, were their ashes given back to the earth. 

For many years during our youth, we spent a week each summer at the City of Berkeley Family Camp on Echo Lake, in the mountains high above Lake Tahoe. This, we thought, would be a good place to scatter Mom and Dad’s ashes. 

What we didn’t expect was the first snowstorm of the season  - in September! How apropos! Mom and Dad loved to ski and spent years on the Ski Patrol at Heavenly Valley and Shaw Valley ski resorts. In fact, Mom and her dear friend Toni were the first two women ski patrol members at Squaw in the early 60s, breaking the glass ceiling for all the women who followed them. Of course it would snow today, as we bequeathed them back to the land they loved so much! 

By the time we got back to Meeks Bay, where we’re gathered for our second annual sibling weekend (unfortunately without Stephan, who had to bow out at the last minute), the sun was out again and Lake Tahoe was shining in all her glory. 

Mom and Dad fell in love with the Sierras, and especially Lake Tahoe and the mountain lakes around it, because it reminded them of the Alps in their home country of Germany, from where the emigrated in 1953. 

I hope that, in some way, they are back home today.