“I have to warn you that your mother’s coffin is pink,” the funeral director said.

I sat in the funeral director’s office with my sister Linda, who had been with Mom when she passed away peacefully the day before at age 89. We exchanged a glance.

Mom had been a theatrical woman who loved opera and wearing muumuus. She had never realized her dream of performing in the opera, even though her voice would have taken her there as a young woman. Back in the early 1940s when Mom studied music, my grandmother would not allow her to become one of “those women” who performed on stage. Mom never lost her flair for the theatrical though, so when she preplanned her own funeral several years before her death, she clearly had the last laugh by choosing a pink coffin.

Linda lived near our mom in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula, Montana, and I had traveled there from my home in Wisconsin, just missing my mom’s passing by a few hours. However, when I stepped off the plane, I was already prepared for the fact that Mom was gone because I knew, in fact I had felt, the exact moment her soul had left her body.

It happened when I was sitting in the Madison, Wisconsin airport, talking to Linda on the phone while she sat next to my mom’s bed in the hospital. My brother Steve and Linda’s daughter Kari were also there.

“I have to go,” Linda said.

“Tell Mom I love her,” I said. I turned off my phone and looked around. Two rows over, a young mother watched her daughter dance with a long ribbon on a wand. It swirled around her slender body while her mother clapped with joy.

The very molecules in the air around the girl became crisper. Crackling and sharp, my vision intensified while time seemed to slow down. A profound awareness of the moment engulfed me, but I watched the little girl with a certain detachment. The long ribbon snaked through the air in slow motion, highlighting its green and gold stripes. I was captivated by the joy on her mother’s face.

I expected to experience something when Mom died, but didn’t anticipate such an intense visual awareness, coupled with a deep, calm acceptance.

That evening, when I saw my brother waiting at the baggage claim, I knew what he would say. “Mom is gone,” Steve said as he leaned down to hug me. “She died right after you talked to Linda.”

That was the same moment when I had watched the young girl dance in front of her mother.

Now, a day later, Linda and I were meeting with the funeral director.

“I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find the coffin because they no longer make this model,” he said. “But I located one in Billings, so I’ll pick it up.” Billings was a seven-hour drive one way.

“Thank you for going there,” I started.

“There’s no extra charge,” he said, anticipating my question.

Two days later, our sisters Sally and Sylvia flew in from Idaho and New York. Mom’s plans included a graveside ceremony with no church or funeral home service. This meant we wouldn’t see the pink coffin until we met the funeral director at the gravesite.

Several years earlier, Mom had not only paid for her coffin and cemetery plot, but also had selected a headstone, which had already been installed. I saw it years ago, which, like her coffin, was unique. Mom was a great-great-grandmother. She didn’t mind being called grandma, but drew the line at adding all the greats. Instead, she wanted to just be called Great Jayne and that was inscribed on her headstone.

The cemetery was in the Bitterroot Valley. On either side, a mountain range towered over the ranches and grassland, which was dotted with several small towns. The cemetery was located on the slopes of the Bitterroot Mountains, facing the Sapphires.

Two tall Ponderosa pines framed the view of the Sapphire Mountains from Mom’s gravesite. As we drove up the dirt road, and then walked the short distance, I was prepared to see a garish pink coffin that would no doubt perfectly match the large floral pattern of one of her vibrant summer muumuus. She had worn them to water the lawn and to the grocery store, much to my dismay as a teenager. I often wondered how someone who attended college, studied singing for ten years, and listened to sophisticated operas could wear a muumuu in public.

Holding my breath, I walked uphill where the funeral director and his assistant waited for us. After shaking his hand, I turned to look at the coffin resting on a platform.

My fear of garish pink faded. A delicate shell pink, the coffin gleamed in the early afternoon sun. Silver handles and trim complemented the luminescent beauty of the coffin’s surface. Smiling, I breathed a sigh of relief. This coffin was beautiful and, as I read aloud the eulogy, I cemented the memory of sunlight on pearly pink as we said goodbye to Mom.

When I returned home to Wisconsin a week later, I was at peace with Mom’s death. One day in July, I sat on my deck outside of our house in the country while my husband worked in the yard. Listening to the birds, I watched a monarch butterfly as it flew up and down near the willow tree we had planted seventeen years ago. Flying toward the deck, it slowed and fluttered in front of the wild milkweed plants growing near my flowers.

Time slowed and colors became vivid. I was more deeply in the moment than I ever had been since my mother died. I heard birds singing and my husband starting the riding mower. The molecules in the air around the butterfly became sharper. The plants became greener and the blue sky deepened. Immersed in an almost out-of-body experience, I watched the hovering butterfly. The world paused and began again.

The butterfly flew around the corner of my house. This was the same experience I had had in the Madison airport while my mother lay dying in a Missoula hospital. The fracturing and intensity of my vision and the slowing down of time was her way of telling me my mother was near. I knew then that my mother’s soul had returned in her reincarnated form.

I’ve traveled to Montana almost every summer since Mom’s death. Each trip involves the ritual of going to Victor Cemetery and standing on the hillside to look at her headstone, the words ‘Great Jayne’ carved into its surface, followed by the dates ‘1923 – 2012.’ When I saw that other families placed stones, feathers, rocks, and other items at the bases of headstones, I started to do the same.

One year, at her headstone, I placed palm-sized sandstones from the forested area surrounding the cemetery. On my next visit, I bought a purple glittery butterfly screensaver at the local drugstore where they sold everything from hand-made ice cream to detergent. Two five-inch purple glittery metal butterflies were attached to each other with a magnet. The minute I saw it, I knew it was perfect for Mom. I placed one metal butterfly at the base of her ground-level headstone, and the other on my refrigerator when I returned home.

Every year, I return to find that the stones and butterfly survive the harsh Montana winter and summer mowing. Last year, however, I visited Mom’s grave for what seemed to be the last time as my sister was moving away. We stood next to Mom’s grave twice during my week-long stay in Montana. The words ‘Great Jayne’ on the flat headstone were a physical reminder of her flamboyant personality. I looked up, knowing Mom had chosen this site well.

The Ponderosa pines framed our view of the valley where hayfields, dotted with Red Angus cattle, stretched to the foothills of the Sapphires. An unusual amount of rain fell in the spring so the fields were green during my visit in July. The slopes of the mountains were covered in trees, but an occasional outcropping of red iron-filled rock mirrored the color of the Red Angus. I was reluctant to leave, but we finally turned from the view and got in the car, driving back to Linda’s house a few miles away.

When I started the tradition of placing items on my mother’s grave, I began doing the same for my father’s grave. He is also buried on a mountain slope overlooking a valley in the Rocky Mountains, but his gravesite is in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains outside of my hometown of Lander, Wyoming. Mom moved to Montana when I was in college and even though she had a plot next to his grave in Lander, she had left it empty.

Years ago, on a trip to Maine, I had bought sea glass in a gift store. Growing up in a landlocked state like Wyoming made the sea glass seem magical. Some pieces were polished in natural shapes, but several pieces were shaped to resemble starfish and sea shells. On my next summer trip to Lander, I took three special pieces of sea glass. Two were natural rock shapes polished to a translucent blue, and one was a deeper blue, shaped like a seashell.

In the past, I had visited the cemetery on my own, but this time, my friend Buzz and I went together so I could show him my dad’s grave. Buzz’s dad had died when he was two, and mine had died when I was five and a half. Neither one of us remembered our fathers, but over the years, we talked about that. His mom never remarried, but mine did. He had only one sister, but there were six kids in my family.

The cemetery was on a steep slope with dirt roads rising sharply between the areas where people were buried. We parked and got out. I always have to hunt around a bit to find my dad’s grave, and even though we looked and looked, I could not find it.

“Let’s just look at my dad’s grave first,” Buzz said.

I followed him as he walked to two headstones resting side by side, identifying his mother Elaine and his dad Kenny. We stood in companionable silence until Buzz leaned down, plucking grass from the edges of the headstone.

“They don’t ever mow close to the headstones in this place,” he complained while quickly pulling grass. “I haven’t been here since Memorial Day.”

While he continued to grumble and work, I wandered two rows over and one down, still looking for my dad’s grave.

“Here it is!” I yelled.

“It’s right there?” Buzz said as he walked over. “I can’t believe it! Our dads have been this close to each other all these years and we never knew it!”

Buzz kneeled down in front of my dad’s grave and immediately began clearing grass from the edges of the flat headstone. Tears blurred my eyes at the sight of my dear friend clearing my father’s lonely grave. My family had suffered terrible grief when he died in 1963 at the age of 42, leaving my mother with six children at a time when widows were dropped by their social circles.

My entire childhood was shrouded in an overwhelming grief I could not articulate. In those days, people didn’t go see counselors. My mom told me that after my father’s funeral, I had said I wanted to commit suicide to be with him, so she took me to see an Episcopalian priest in the church that was kitty-corner from our house. To this day, I have no memory of that experience, except I can clearly picture the priest, a handsome dark-haired man in a black suit and clerical collar.

I have read that children who lose a parent at a young age never fully recover from the loss. This is true. For most of my life, I stifled my grief whenever it threatened to overwhelm me. I put on a front, not even telling my mom. I don’t know why I could never talk about my father’s death. For fifty years, I shoved my grief deep inside because I felt that if I ever started crying, I would not be able to stop. Like a beaver dam holding back the river in a high mountain meadow, I held back my tears through sheer force of will.

Years later, when my own daughter turned six, I finally saw a grief counselor. The therapist pointed out that seeing my daughter at age six likely triggered memories of the past when I was her age. Counseling did help, but Buddha helped more. I eventually found peace through the teachings of the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. His words on the acceptance of death converted my overwhelming grief to a more peaceful understanding. And I was free to commemorate my parents at their graves on my own terms.

When Buzz finished plucking grass, I leaned down and placed the three pieces of sea glass on the edges of the flat cement surrounding the raised central portion of the headstone. “I still come here every year and decorate my mom and dad’s grave,” Buzz said. “If you want me to, I can decorate your dad’s grave.”

“Would you?” I said. “I’ll tell my sisters. They will be so happy. Thank you, Buzz… I think I’m going to cry.”

Buzz only laughed. “I’ll be happy to do that.”

We stood peacefully, looking at the view from Mount Hope Cemetery. We saw the foothills of the Wind River Mountains to the west, the red dirt of Squaw Creek area to the north, and the Sand Hills to the east. The valley was green and lush. I soaked up the view, knowing it would be many years before I would stand on this hill again.

Buzz sent me a photo of my father’s grave on Memorial Day. Even after two years, the sea glass was still there, nestled next to the flowers he placed on the grave. The butterfly in Montana and the sea glass in Wyoming guard my parents in cemeteries miles apart. My heart is with them, though I am not. I am at peace, knowing these mountain graves will be there whenever I return to stand on the hillsides and gaze at the valleys below.

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