A Place To Meet

     I'm currently reading a book about a widow. The Year of Pleasures, by Elizabeth Berg, is exceptional, like everything else I've read by her. I've been thinking a lot about death and what it would be like to lose Andy.
     One day while riding our bikes, Andy and I took a detour through a cemetery. At the top of a hill we came to a stop and looked around at the tombstones bursting from the grass as the breeze rustled leaves in the large trees nearby. The cemetery was located in St. Charles, where we currently live in MO. Before moving here, we lived in Austin, TX. I cannot quite express why, but Texas felt like home. Neither of us were from there, but I remember very vividly the day I was preparing to turn onto the street where our first apartment was located with a car loaded down with boxes of pictures and clothes, and thinking as I waited to make my left turn, 'This is home.' I felt it so sure in my spirit, so clearly in my head, that it is still vivid in my mind twelve years later.
     I was so excited to be there. Excited about our apartment, excited about this stage in life when Andy was starting graduate school, excited about meeting new people and exploring a new city. But I don't think that excitement is what generated that feeling of "home." I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I loved it.
      Anyway, while looking at the graves and breathing in the summer air I asked Andy, "Where do you want to be buried?" His immediate response, "Austin."
     When I asked the question, that same response was painted in my brain, but I was a little surprised that he said it so quickly and enthusiastically. As it stands, we are trying to find our way back to Texas. Who knows when and if it will happen, but hopefully one day it will.
     Andy and I have talked about death before. Casually mentioning things we'd like done at our memorial services, how long we'd like to be in a coma if that were the case, and we've both decided we want to be cremated. Being cremated makes me wonder though about the "meeting place."
     Two of my grandparents are cremated. Their ashes were not spread anywhere, but placed in a columbarium. So, there is a place to go and see them, so to speak. However, I'm a very practical person, and I just don't really see the sense in buying a plot or space to house my ashes. Yet, if there's no one place to visit me or vise versa, a place for me to visit Andy if God forbid he die first, I think I'd be sad.
     This has made me realize we need to designate a meeting place. A place where we can go and know that the other person liked being there also. I don't think Andy would actually be there. But I do want to feel close to him. Isn't that the point of graves and columbariums? To feel close to the person whose remains are housed there?