The Mother Road

4/22/23

"Lighten up while you still can

Don't even try to understand

Just find a place to take your stand and

Take it easy"

- Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey

My mom died two years ago today and she left me a list of places she wished to have her ashes scattered: Kettle Moraine State Forest, Black River Falls (both in Wisconsin) and Route 66. She didn't specify where exactly on Route 66, but Winslow, AZ was where I was drawn. It has its place in music history since being immortalized in the song "Take it easy" and it was also a stop on the Arizonia trip my parents took just a week before my dad died suddenly in 1998.

Winslow has run with that namecheck in the song and provides a reminder of how Route 66 once held the spirit of a passage to the promised land and a quirky one to serve as a testament to how it is always as much about the journey as it is the destination. With the proper perspective, it is easy to retrieve all the idealism that Steinbeck's Mother Road can hold..

My mom also provided that same spirit, filling our home with music and its power to use time to travel through it, to open yourself up to other minds and circumstances and to ignite your own creative spark to arrive at a better place and enjoy the ride.

Her death was a tremendous loss. And I utilized that trip to Winslow to experience my grief completely, not because I see any value in picking at wounds, but because I recognize the importance of those openings and their ability to transport you to a much richer experience of life and a heightened state of reverence. Though it is always a twisted and conflicted thing that the people whose departures create such great changes in you are no longer here to enjoy the company of your more actualized self.

When I reached Winslow and stepped out into that beautiful desert air and stood on the US 66 marker in the middle of the road with only a bronze statue of Glenn Frey looking on, I sent a portion of my mom's ashes into the air, with the body that betrayed her surrendered and scattered in the historical road, her spirit was released, she was free at last. And all the good that she offered was loose in the world again.

I miss her but I also see her present in so much too.