Ashes to Ashes

For what is probably the first time in my life, I didn't receive ashes on Ash Wednesday this year. I know it's not a Holy Day of Obligation, but we always went anyway. The message that we are destined to return to ashes is not one that I need a visual reminder of. When my mother died, I was frozen as to how to deal with what few material things she left behind. The first step I took toward doing so, and the only one for some years, was to take her medical records, billing, doctors' reports, all of which I'd dealt with for her, out into her back yard and set fire to them. She didn't like that part of her life, and had turned all that sickness business over to me. I felt satisfaction in seeing all those reminders turn to ashes.
Again, my mind is contorted by what to do with what is left. You can tell yourself that you're doing what the one who is gone would have wanted, but you know you will never be sure. I only know that when last summer, I took all her accumulated medical files and documentations, a great amount, out into my own back yard and burned them, I felt the same vague sense of satisfaction as when I burned my mother's medical papers. Ashes to ashes.....