And unto dust thou shall return

Ash Wednesday has come and gone. I could almost hear the voice of Father Plummer echoing through the old church as he repeated to each of us sinners, “Remember man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shall return.” With that reminder, I received a smudge of palm ashes in the shape of a cross on my forehead on that dreary Wednesday. It gave a child a lot to think about. Lent was a time of self-denial; a time of sacrifice and reflection. Honestly, the first few years that I received the ashes, I wondered why he was calling me “man.” My mother assured me that “man” was just a short way of saying woman and human. But with that settled, I had to think about the really important subject at hand: giving something up for Lent. This was a big topic around the dinner table. We had to declare our holy intentions to our parents and siblings, and we were more than willing to keep each other in line. We counted on Mom to keep track of all the elaborate rules about fasting from certain meals, and from meat.

It was common for us kids to give up candy. We were all expected to fast from having a little treat after dinner. One year I was feeling extra sacrificial and holy (or perhaps guilty), so I decided to give up the thing that I enjoyed the most: watching the Red Skelton Show. During those weeks before Easter, I would separate myself from the family, and stay in my room for half an hour on Tuesday nights. I could hear them laughing, and it broke my heart. But I stayed strong, and made it through Lent without “Freddy the Freeloader,” or “Gertrude and Heathcliff.”

The image of ashes and Lent and sacrifice has been on my mind this week. The country will always know exactly when Lent begins because of the extensive news coverage of Mardi Gras in post-Katrina New Orleans. But this week it was more than awareness of Fat Tuesday, smudges of ash, or self sacrifice that had me thinking: it was also the inescapable drama surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

I was not at all surprised when she died. I thought back to a time when I first fell in love with two little boys, not flesh of my flesh, but born in my heart. I remember telling Lenny and close friends that if their birth mothers wanted them back after they had called me Mommy, I was going to flee to Toronto. Why Toronto? Well, I didn’t know anyone in Toronto, so it sounded like the kind of place where I could get lost with two little boys. Of course, I didn’t mean it. I would have stayed, and would have fought a buzz saw for my children. That’s how intensely I felt the maternal connection.

As the kids grew, they used to think I was over protective. My answer to them was always the same: “If anything happens to you, I’ll dig a hole and pull the dirt in after me!” After much eye rolling, they usually had to acknowledge my feelings, whether or not they understood.

So, as flawed, and tweaked, and imperfect as she might have been, I understood a little bit what Anna Nicole must have been feeling when her son died. I wondered if she remembered that she was merely dust, and she just quit trying to be anything more. How very sad, and yet how very (hu)man.