Ellen's Ashes: A Journey Into Immortality

In late November, one of my very best friends in the whole world slipped into her celestial star-suit, quite unexpectedly, and made her journey into the Next Place. It was a great shock to me, as I knew she had cancer - again - but there was a medical trial she was going to participate in and we had no idea things would move along in the direction they did, and so quickly.

Ellen died on November 27. She was 66 years old. I worked with her for quite a few years at "Independent Learning" at Penn State, starting in the very early years, which is to say (for me) the mid-1980s. I was hired as a work/study student in the summer of 1985 and subletted a room above George's House of Music on Atherton Street, not far from the bus station; I had no car, so I walked to work in Mitchell Building, along Park Avenue; yes, I walked EVERYwhere.

I had never spent a summer at Penn State, and it was a whole different world. None of my college friends were around. It was so strange and lonely. Ellen took me under her wing, invited me to her apartment (not far from the University Drive Burger King), fed me, and became my office-mate and one of my dearest friends. She taught me to love Marilyn Monroe, and black-and-white movies, and Cary Grant. There were secrets about me that only she knew.

She moved away then, and oh how I cried the day I learned she would be going. California seemed so far away and it was years before I saw her again. But we kept in touch as we were able. She sent me things: a tiny ceramic dog, some earrings she had fashioned herself, a beautiful scarf that was hand-made in colors she knew I'd adore, trinkets, cards.

I saw Ellen one last time, at a funeral for a friend, a few years ago; and then a breakfast date at Waffle Shop on North Atherton, before she left. I kept trying to talk her into "coming back home," and she laughed when I said that. What, a Jersey Girl, transplanted to central Pennsylvania?

When Ellen died, one of her very best friends who was watching over her until the end shared one last "Hey, Boot, I love you!" to her on my behalf, to my eternal gratitude. The message elicited one last smile for me. Ellen died later that night. This is all wrong. We were supposed to grow old together.

One of Ellen's final wishes was that some of her friends would help scatter her ashes. And so I said that I would be happy to do that. They said they would send me a vial of ashes once everything had been handled in Massachusetts, which was the last place where she lived. Ellen's wish was that we "take her on vacation" with us, and then "leave her there."

The vial of ashes arrived this week on Wednesday, via priority mail. They were in a pretty container, inside a bag, inside a box, inside another box. And a good friend of hers had taken several of the cranes Ellen had made and placed them in the box for me.

I'd been awaiting the arrival of the ashes for a while, and had some silly - and some serious - conversations with my husband about where to put her. I am often in the wilds of the back-country, but Ellen would have hated that. She - my Jersey Girl - never went anywhere that she couldn't plug in a hair dryer!

But the lady's slipper orchids are blooming now in the Barrens, and if there is one thing I know Ellen loved, it was the color PINK! She adored pink and went through phases where everything was pink. I remember her pink Marilyn Monroe bathroom phase at her next apartment, not far from the original Faccia Luna on South Atherton; it was amazing to see!

She also adored SHOES, and especially fancy shoes, and high-heeled shoes, and pretty sparkly shoes, and oh yeah, PINK shoes. And she loved fancy flowers; every apartment sported prints by Georgia O'Keeffe, an artist whose works Ellen loved. So I thought lady's slipper orchids - also called moccasin flower - might be just about perfect! This is how it came to be that Ellen made her journey with me, to become one of the Pink Ladies of the Scotia Barrens.

On this morning, Tiny Tiger and I set out with my bicycle and umbrella, with the vial of ashes tucked in my daysack, and we were glad we had that umbrella because it started to drizzle and the woods were covered in a fine mist. I found three of the best stands of orchids and I placed some of her ashes around them. (I've saved more for other places I have in mind, but you may not get to hear about ALL of Ellen's journeys.)

This is a photo of one of the stands of orchids, with a crane that Ellen made, that symbolizes her spirit flying free now. In some cultures, cranes have great significance. They can be considered in some eastern cultures to be a symbol of immortality. So we'll leave it like that. (The crane, by the way, came home with me.)

When I was done with my errand, I packed up and headed toward the edge of the woods to leave, as the mist turned into rain. The woods were so green and lovely, just a paradise to me. Ellen has become one of the Pink Ladies now and I will visit her there every time the orchids bloom in springtime. And even at the times of year when they don't. . . .

But I didn't make it out of the woods without tears, oh no. I had a sudden memory of my big sister Barb's funeral, and my little sister Julie, who took such good care of her, at the end of the service, turning to me with a stricken look in her eyes: "I can't bear to LEAVE her here," she whispered, in pain.

And Julie and Kaylee (her daughter) and I - wearing our matching "I love you to the moon and back" necklaces that Barb had bought us - turned and wrapped our arms around Barb's coffin and we cried some more that day. Oh, how hard it was to leave her there in that graveyard . . . my beloved sister.

And so, having accomplished my errand, having brought my dear friend home at last, I walked, bawling like a baby in the spring rain, in the beautiful green Pennsylvania woods, with the pink orchids around me, lifting my voice and whispering to my friend and to all of the spirits of the air . . . . that she can be free now.

There was a poem that would come around on Facebook once in a while that Ellen and I both loved. It is called The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry. The final line of the poem is one that sticks with me, and so I leave it here as some sort of final benediction:

"I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

Be free, my beautiful friend. Be free.

It's tough to choose a soundtrack song for this, because I want something Ellen would love, and I don't have any idea if she would like this version at all, but I do, so here it is: Disturbed, with The Sound of Silence. It is from their album, Immortalized.

More of Ellen's tale:
The Ellen L. Bliss Memorial Cheesesteak
For Our Jersey Girl: Oh My God, CAKE!!!!!!

Also related (just in case I'm not the only one who needs to know this):
2022 Rules About Scattering Ashes, the Pennsylvania Edition