The emotion in me started to build up the closer I got to the National Mall and by the time I crossed Constitution Avenue I had melted into a puddle of goo. I’m not really sure what happened. I was just suddenly overwhelmed by the grandeur and the history and patriotism. I had the Capitol Building to my left and way off to my right was the Washington Monument. It was still very early in the morning and a bit cold, making my breath visible as I walked towards the Washington Monument. I also carried a ziplock baggy of Chris’s ashes in my pocket and my plan was to leave them somewhere on the National Mall.

It has been over a year since I’ve left Chris somewhere. I think the last place I left him was in New Mexico. I just didn’t go any where this year that Chris hadn’t already been. When I decided to go to this conference in DC, I realized that I needed to do some research to determine an appropriate spot for Chris. I thought about leaving him near the Washington Monument because he thought it was funny we had this giant phallic symbol as a monument. Then again, no one I know could do a more accurate Forrest Gump impression than Chris. Whenever I hear the name ‘Jenny’, I hear it in Chris’s Forrest Gump voice. There’s that scene where Forrest and Jenny meet in middle of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, so I also toyed with the idea of leaving him there. There were too many options really: The Air and Space Museum, the International Spy Museum, the Blind Whino Psychedelic Church. That’s the short list.

In the end I decided to leave Chris as close as I could to the Kilroy graffiti hidden on the back side of the World War II Memorial. “Kilroy was here” cartoons started showing up during the second World War where ever US troops appeared. The comedy in tragedy theme was a humor that Chris embraced. His favorite book was Catch 22. He signed on as medic because he thought he’d be spending his time wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, lounging in a hammock with a martini in his hand just like the doctors in M.A.S.H. Then there’s the bonus of being hidden in plain site. Remember that time Chris put that ‘Return to the fiery pits of Mount Doom’ sticker on the Barnes and Noble display copy of that Anne Coulter book? This spot just seemed to be the right one and being there at such a deserted time of morning made it easier for me accomplish this. I still managed dump about half of Chris’s ashes down the front of my black coat. I looked like a beignet from Cafe du Monde.

I ended up having a couple of really good discussions on death after leaving Chris’s ashes. When I met up with Christy, a college friend who I had not seen in twenty years, she talked about how even though we’d lost touch with each other and only had minimal connections through social media, Chris had left a void. She feels the void left by his passing. And that’s true. He left a big ole gapping hole that we have all had to figure out how to navigate around. Our last night in DC, I ended up talking to my boss about navigating the gapping holes of death. He is in the middle of dealing with a terminally ill loved one and we talked about loss and moving forward. I told him about J and I told him about how his death shaped mine and Chris’s views on death and living. I talked about how the very best way I can honor Chris is by living, truly living, my life. It is not always easy, but it is harder for me to think of myself as a disappointment to him.

So I do my best to truly live this life.