Taking Mother Home
Monday, June 29th, 2026: Places, Special Places.
My Greatest Love
After my mother’s death last November, I reacted in shock, then fell into depression – what most people call “grieving”.
For the next month, I worked through it by writing about what my mother and I experienced together.
But in the new year, my job has been to ensure the security of my disabled brother, who lives back east in our mother’s house. That involved establishing a special needs trust to supplement his inadequate income, transferring the house to the trust, rearranging his accounts and the house accounts between him and the trust, and responding to an attempt by the Social Security Administration to defraud him out of a chunk of his disability income.
Meanwhile, at my home out west, our mother continued to haunt me. I had pictures of her in unavoidable spots, and I’d set up a shrine in my bedroom with her ashes and things precious to her at the end, which I mostly couldn’t bear to look at.
Even before her passing, I’d expected to write songs to her, about my feelings, about what happened, and to celebrate her life, and in between my chores, I began working on those songs. Beyond what I’d already written in December, songwriting forced me to figure her out, to crystallize and condense everything I’d learned about her, and what she meant to me.
Getting in touch with my feelings for my mother resurrected abundant memories of love affairs with women. I’ve been incredibly blessed to know, love, and be loved by many – but as a seeker, my path has always led onwards, past the safety and security of relationships, toward the solitary unknown.
I’d always treasured two of these as the great loves of my life: my soulmate in college, and the “Native princess” much later with whom I found the greatest passion. But writing songs to my mother taught me that she was truly the greatest love of my life. What a strange revelation! Some might even find it troubling – but anyone who’s been following our story will understand what I mean.
Finding the Farm
A decade ago, as she approached her 90th birthday, our mother created a page of final wishes. She wanted to be cremated, with her ashes returned on or near her mother’s family farm, the place that “made her who she was”. She described riding bicycles there in the summer with her girlfriends – a ten-mile ride on country lanes – where they helped Grandfather and Grandmother with the garden, the chickens, sheep, pigs, and milk cow, surrounded by green fields of corn that rustled in the wind, corn that from that rich black soil, month by month, grew taller than a man.
Her Grandfather was our great-grandfather – he died when I was only two years old. His will stipulated that the farm should remain in the family in perpetuity. But his heirs were all girls, none of whom married farmers. And as Grandma and her sisters passed away in the early 1990s, my mother’s cousins began pressuring her to agree to sell the farm, believing it would make them all rich. Eventually they wore her down, the farm was sold, and when the proceeds were divided up, they disappointed everyone.
Believing we would need the current owner’s permission to leave our mother’s ashes there, and fearing we wouldn’t get it, I spent weeks trying to get information remotely, from my home out West. What I found was a common story: the house had been parceled off from the cropfields. The house was owned by a trust, and the fields were held by the absentee owner of many farms in the area. Returning Mom’s ashes to the house made no sense – it’s been doubled in size with a rear extension, surrounded by a manicured lawn.
Likewise, the cropfields have been extended so that every square inch between the road and the river is plowed and cultivated. But the farm lies between forks of a river, and when I was eventually able to compare the parcel boundary with Google maps and satellite view, I could see that one corner of the parcel lies across one of those river forks, leaving what appears on satellite view to be a tiny triangular stand of riparian forest cut off from the main farm, mirrored by another stand directly across the country lane that accesses the farmhouse. I was then surprised to find a 360-degree view of that forest on Street View, and to learn that two years ago, when Google’s photos were taken, the canopy completely shaded the lane, there was cleared space on both sides to park vehicles, and the forested section of the lane couldn’t be seen from any neighboring properties.
Panic Attack
Traveling back east to honor our mother’s wishes was the great rite, the great ceremonial act I’d been preparing for, and dreading, since last November. This was to be the third cross-country trip I’d made to lead the ceremonial return of a loved one’s ashes – the first being in spring 2010 when my brother and I flew separately to a small town on the Oregon coast, where our father wanted his remains added to Whiskey Creek as it empties into the Pacific Ocean.
The second was in spring 2024, when Katie’s siblings asked me to preside over the return of her ashes to our cave in the desert. For that, I set two of her lyrics to music and sang them for the group, and was rewarded by the gift of a rattle from my Native friend, who also sings at funerary ceremonies.
I planned to make the trip east in June, and by May I’d finished four new songs to my mother. In her final wishes, she had given us simple but complete instructions: only family were to be present, I was to speak, each of us was to sing a song of our choice, and I was to read her favorite poem – Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”.
I had started and slaved over those new songs to perform at our mother’s memorial, and worked hard practicing them every day for weeks. But somehow I could never envision myself singing them at the actual site, there with my brother. Finally, I recalled my mother’s last year in institutions, where I’d repeatedly performed songs from my entire career – and her favorite, the one she kept asking me to repeat, was “Helicopter” – a lyric I wrote in the late 1980s and set to music in 2009. So I set the new songs aside.
Preparing for a trip often stresses me out, but as the day of departure approached, I realized my mother’s remains would now be leaving my home, never to return. We routinely talk about the soul leaving the body at death, but we also say that a person’s spirit remains in things they touched. I didn’t want to let go of my mother in any way.
So I found myself consumed by a panic attack during the nine hours of travel back east.
Waiting for the Apocalypse
I arrived after midnight Sunday, and the next day, my brother – who can barely walk – agreed to try to make the trip to the farm on Wednesday afternoon. He drives, and we agreed to take separate vehicles, since he seldom goes out and likes to maximize each opportunity with side trips to friends, fast food outlets, and railroad crossings where he can watch for trains.
On Wednesday morning, still feeling fragile, I packed for the trip in late morning, then checked the weather before going downstairs to rouse my brother.
The National Weather Service had issued an extreme weather warning, and the local news outlet was forecasting two apocalyptic storms – the first in the afternoon, with winds up to 80 mph, and the second in the evening, with tornadoes and hail over 2 inches in diameter.
So we canceled our trip to the farm. My brother stayed in bed, and I returned upstairs to pack emergency clothing, documents, and valuables. If the neighborhood siren went off or damage occurred, we would take shelter in my brother’s downstairs bathroom, the only windowless room in the house.
I spent the next twelve hours anxiously following the weather on multiple platforms. The storm cells forming one after the other in Kansas and Missouri advanced east across central Illinois, where tornadoes were spotted and damage was reported, but eventually, entering Indiana, they trended slightly south, ending up 20-40 miles south of us, where they dumped a lot of rain and blew some trees down.
Coming Home
Our mother’s house – my brother’s house now – is still full of her stuff, and another goal of this trip was to make progress distributing and disposing of it. I spent days sorting through clothing, books, and more than a decade of tax records. Boxing hundreds of pounds of documents and hauling them to UPS to be shredded. Boxing hundreds of pounds of books and hauling them to the library bookstore – my back and shoulder are still hurting. I found our mother’s wedding dress, and her mink coat, which needs to be cleaned and repaired – another trip – before it can be sold. I was able to get the title to her car transferred, but will need another trip east to actually sell it.
I made frustrating visits to my old refuges, the art museum and the Western museum, which are only shells of their former glory.
And on the day after the stressful storms, my brother agreed to make another try at the farm.
He left ahead of me, and I got lost at a city intersection which has been rerouted, so that I ended up about ten minutes behind him. But he slowed for me, and I caught up with him just outside our hometown, 40 minutes from the city.
We drove through our old hometown, likewise a shell of its former glory – changed from a thriving, self-sufficient farmer’s marketplace in the late 19th century to a sleepy, depopulated bedroom community dependent on the big city now. We drove out through familiar countryside where the best corn was now knee-high. To the country church where Grandma sang a solo at age 18, and we both turned off to discuss the final approach. From what we’d seen, flooding was possible – and of course, the forest could’ve been cleared since Google had taken the photos, and once parked, we could be spotted and interrogated by concerned neighbors.
The country lane did turn out to be flooded just before the turnoff through the forest – I drove through easily in my mother’s larger SUV, but my brother had to take it more cautiously.
We reached the patch of forest, and indeed it formed a long green tunnel over the road, invisible from outside. The forested area was much larger than I’d expected from the map – although the country lane was only wide enough for one vehicle, so it was a good thing we had space to park, and no one passed while we were there.
This was the way Mom and her girlfriends would’ve reached the farm on their bikes, 90 years ago in the 1930s. They would’ve treasured the shade after the long ride from town.
Funeral homes give you the ashes in a clear plastic bag, which is awkward. So I’d brought a stoneware pitcher from our mother’s house, and transferred the ashes into it on the spot. I unpacked the little travel guitar I keep in Mom’s house, and walked over to my brother’s car with the much-used-and-annotated Frost book. Getting out would be too difficult and dangerous for him, so he just rolled his window down.
We talked about our completely different experiences of our mother. I was born and spent my early childhood outside our dad’s small Ohio hometown, where our mom kept house while I played outdoors or walked to school. My brother was born seven years later, just before our parents separated and our mom took us to her small Indiana hometown. The divorce was amicable and we continued to care equally about both parents, but with our Dad in California, we typically saw him only once a year – sometimes for up to a month, but our mother and her parents were the ones who raised us.
After I graduated from high school, I moved away permanently, a few hours away to college, then out West, where I knew our mother primarily during her annual week-long visits to explore my cities, meet my friends and girlfriends, attend my parties and nightclub gigs, and join me on road trips to the coast, the mountains, and the desert. And when she became an artist and moved to her own big city, I visited her back, becoming part of her vibrant downtown community.
Meanwhile in our Indiana hometown, my brother’s life was derailed in adolescence by his accident. Struggling to recover, he spent parts of the 1970s and 1980s in suburban California with our dad, but ended up living most of his adult life in our hometown near our mom, moving into her city home during her last decade. As a small-town boy with mostly poor “redneck” friends, he was a fish out of water among her urban sophisticates.
So where I experienced our mom as a sort of peer, my brother knew her as a hands-on mother, a means of support, and a roommate – but partly a stranger, in her increasing passion for nature and the arts.
Here on the edge of the farm, he sang “The Lord’s Prayer” in his operatic baritone voice. I thanked him, and sang “Helicopter”. He’d never heard the song, and solemnly praised it. I read the poem, but could barely finish it for tears and sobbing.
I retrieved the pitcher and crossed the road toward an overgrown clearing several paces into the forest, calling out to our mother, welcoming her home.
Afterward, my brother and I embraced through the window, and he drove off past our great-grandfather’s farmhouse. I stood alone for a while in the silent green tunnel. I’d brought her home, but how could I leave her?
Sacred Ground
Walking out of the forest on the farm, I’d noticed a couple of crumpled beer cans, partly hidden beneath the annuals that carpet these riparian hardwood groves. My feelings were running too strong to think clearly, but I realized, on the drive back to the city, what the cleared strips along the lane there are for. It’s a “parking” spot, a remote, secluded corner of the county where young people go at night to drink and make out. That’s our mother’s final resting place.
So a couple days later – on the Summer Solstice – I drove back down, and spent a half hour walking the margins of the forest on both sides of the road and picking up all the trash. There really wasn’t much.
So close to the fork of the river, I’d worried the forest would be subject to flooding. But now I realized it’s on a terrace six to eight feet above the actual floodplain. And at the edge of the terrace, I found a trail, leading downstream away from the road, and upstream on the opposite side. Less than a foot wide, it looked more like a game trail – but I don’t remember ever seeing deer around here. I followed it a hundred yards into the forest, then it faded away. It was all mature native hardwoods – elms, maples, walnuts, with grapevines spiraling up into the high canopy – and I couldn’t see the end of it in any direction.
During the following week, I came to realize that by instructing us to come here and do this for her, our mother forged a new bond between us and this place, a bond that hadn’t existed before now. It had made her, and she brought us here to bind us to her home.
Our mother and father were both only children, and my brother and I are now the sole survivors of our family. Because of this, I became the final custodian of our family records, photos, and memorabilia. I’ve drawn family trees. I’ve looked for “home places” where the great-grandparents hosted family reunions, and I’ve visited rural cemeteries.
And now, I realize I would like to make pilgrimages to the graves – all the graves I can find, sacred places there in the hinterlands of the great Ohio Valley. As if I didn’t have enough to do already! Some people retire and don’t know what to do with themselves, can’t seem to get up off the couch. But I just keep adding to my list.