juneteenth. barb is coming to trade me a soft cover of the body keeps the score for the hard cover she loaned me on the way to receive mister's ashes. i'm not sure how i feel, i'm trying to check in. with dad's ashes i didn't feel too much, it seemed like a chore with no benefit, and it was cold. dad's mother rose i held on my lap still warm from the oven, and opened with a can opener, and cut my hand, and put in a little hollow at the bottom of an arbutus tree, and dad was there, and he seemed like an interloper. mister is different. there is no finality with mister. no closure. simply and continuously, opening. 

post dat. yet for us it's a turn of the page, the chapter of the dog between us, and we can place some of his ashes in a place we think of him, a place to celebrate him. i think maybe by the juneberry bushes he loved. not to close the book that will be open in time but to celebrate him in every way we think of him. today swimming, and thinking of his happiness, and tomorrow placing his ashes in some of the places he loved to go.