The Diner Frozen in Time

Friday morning we drove through the majestic cascades on our way to Wenatchee, Washington. In my mind's eye, I tried to overlay them with our Great Smoky Mountains, but while both mountain ranges are exceptionally beautiful, the feel of them is different. The Smoky Mountains are a soft sea of gentle greens with bursts of wildflower colors that nestle among the pines. The Cascades are sharp points that reach for the sky, cutting the clouds, as if to say, "I will not be ignored!" The greens are darker, deeper, and the feel is wild and free. It is a fitting image as we tote mom's ashes to their final destination.

We're hungry and tired when we arrive in Wenatchee in the early afternoon, so we stop at a diner along main street. My youngest daughter remarks, "Mom, this looks like the kind of place where the local kids hang out." It does. There are high school team photos on the walls, signed balls from various sports, and images, old and new, of kids at play. While taking pictures, I discover photos from when mom was a teen and comment to my husband about it. An older gentleman sitting nearby hears our conversation and asks where we're from. In the telling of our tale, his eyes light up when he hears mom's name...he remembers her! I feel closer than ever to her, as we listen to him talk abut what the diner was like "back in the day". We thank him for allowing us to interrupt his lunch, and let free emotions that his story has unleashed. She is here--not her ashes--not her body--but her thriving spirit, in the land, and the people, in the past and the present. She is a part of Wenatchee's past and her legacy spreads out from there, across hundreds of miles, stretching from Washington to North Carolina and many points in between.

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