Alex's Wake by Martin Goldsmith

in the day’s brilliant sun and puffy white clouds, which race across the sky at the urging of a frisky breeze. As we walk, I prepare myself emotionally for the task I’ve scheduled for the afternoon: scattering my father’s ashes.
    Since his death and cremation in the spring of 2009, his ashes have reposed in a heavy cardboard box in an upstairs closet in our home in Maryland. The many tender, though fanciful, conversations my father and I enjoyed in his last years at Arbor Place, during which we planned his return to his hometown and the park where his warmest memories were born, convinced me that it was meet and right to allow his dust to mingle with the rich soil of the Schlossgarten. On Friday night, I told Pastor Jacoby of my plan and asked her to please accompany my father on his homecoming. She readily agreed.
    So on this Sunday afternoon, Roland, Amy, and I drive down to Gartenstrasse, Amy holding the box containing the ashes on her lap. We leave the car on a side street and walk solemnly to the Schlossgarten entrance that is nearest the splendid old house where my father grew up, walking the path that he, Bertha, and Elsa undoubtedly took when they visited the happy realm they called the Anemonen Reich , their Anemone Kingdom. Dietgard Jacoby is waiting for us.
    Our little four-person procession enters the park and turns left onto another of the Schlossgarten’s well-tended paths, the weighty box in my arms. My deliberate steps bring me to a grove of rhododendron bushes, ablaze in red and purple blossoms. My father spoke lovingly of the rhododendrons of his youth and I know this to be his proper resting place. But now that the appointed time has come, I find myself frozen, fearful of the finality of what we are about to do.
    My loving wife comes to my assistance. She takes the box from me and opens it. I stare at its contents, not comprehending that this grey ash, no different from the substance I recall from countless campfires and cozy fireplaces, was once the man who gave me life.
    I look then at the three serious faces gathered around me and try to smile. “Günther Ludwig Goldschmidt was born here in 1913,” I say slowly. “George Gunther Goldsmith was my father. May he rest in peace.”
    The ash is smooth and silky. I grasp a handful and toss it over the nearest rhododendron. I pass the box to Amy, who scatters her handful. Then Dietgard takes her turn, and finally Roland, who accompanies his toss by intoning, Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad . We continue until the box is nearly empty and the red and purple blossoms havetaken on a grayish cast. Dietgard hugs me then and whispers in my ear, “He will always be here. He will always be with you.”
    I struggle with a trembling voice to proclaim, “The king of the Anemonen Reich has returned to reclaim his kingdom.” Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I am crying, partly because I am saying a final farewell to my father and partly because I suddenly have a vision of Günther as a boy of ten, romping through this magical park with his dear little friends and without a care in the world.
    On the way back to the car, I make a detour to 34 Gartenstrasse and sprinkle the remaining ashes over a pink rosebush in the front yard. So even though Alex was forced to sell his beautiful house, Günther will always be there.
    That evening, we pay a call on Anneliese Wehrmann, an acquaintance of Hilu and Roland. Now ninety-one, she was a friend and classmate of my Aunt Eva years ago when her name was Anneliese Meyer. The two girls attended the Cecilia School and spent many hours together, at least in the years before the Nazi accession. Anneliese enjoyed the great privilege of “Aryan ancestry.”
    She invites Amy and me into her snug apartment and offers us tea and cookies. Her nearly white hair is up in a neat bun and her eyes sparkle as she recalls her earliest memories of Eva Goldschmidt.