OPINION My Mother’s Ashes

OPINION My Mother’s Ashes

Spread my ashes around a tree in the Hudson Valley. My mother planned her death carefully—body donated to medical research, final documents in order and she chose when she stopped taking her medication. She told me that she wanted her ashes to be spread around a tree in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. This instruction weighed on me because I hadn’t executed it yet. The box of ashes, returned from the medical college, sat on the dining room win…