I Had Promises to Keep

Three things I did after my parents died that brought me peace

Picture generated with AI using the author’s photos. Editorial support provided by ChatGPT assistant Chet.

It caught me by surprise.

As my husband Ron and I drove home from a small Unity church in southeast Kansas City, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

It took me a few miles to realize why.

That morning, I’d delivered the final boxes, filled with my father’s books.

I was pleased about where the books had gone. But more than that, their donation fulfilled the last of three promises I’d made to my parents.

Or so I thought.

♡

The First Promise

My parents were humble people.

I’ll always be grateful that we’d taken time as a family — mom and dad and my brother and me — to talk about their final wishes openly, and usually with a little humor thrown in.

That’s just the way we were.

Dad died in 2019. Mom followed in 2023. Neither had wanted a funeral or memorial service. They were cremated, and the family — children, grandchildren, in-laws, and everybody’s dogs — gathered simply to scatter their ashes on the Kansas farm they had loved for so many years.

It was exactly what they wanted.

But for me, it was still unfinished.

After Dad died, Mom and I had fallen deeply into genealogy. We wandered through tiny country cemeteries reading names on weathered headstones, discovering great-uncles, great-grandparents, and distant cousins whose stories had almost been forgotten.

There was something unexpectedly comforting, for me at least, about being able to point to a stone and say, “There they are.”

One cemetery became especially meaningful.

Near my parents’ farm, Mom and I found a little church graveyard where her great-grandmother was buried. Beside her was an open space.

And it called to me.

I talked to Mom about it. She told me that if it was important to me to bury some of their ashes there — with a small headstone marking the place— it was fine with her. She was certain Dad would have been good with it too.

After she was gone, the remainder of their ashes sat on a cabinet in my office for far longer than I expected. Life has a way of postponing even the things that matter most.

Finally, I secured the plot, designed a headstone, and along with the assistance of kind church volunteers, Ron and I laid them to rest.

Now there was a place where future generations could come to and say, “Here they are.” “Here’s mom and dad.” “Here’s grandma and grandpa.”

And perhaps it would spark their own interest in the stories of our family as it had for me.

That brought me the sense of closure I’d hoped for.

But I had two more promises to keep.

♡

The Second Promise

Over the years, Mom and I had collected railroad china from trains that passed through Kansas City’s Union Station, where my grandfather spent much of his career supervising crews who cleaned and prepared the passenger cars.

Some of the dishes were valuable, but their real worth was in the memories — the many hours Mom and I spent hunting for them together in antique stores, railroad shows, and garage sales.

I’d carefully packed them away after she died. And ever since, it had always seemed too painful to reopen the boxes.

But after settling my parents in the cemetery, something shifted. It was time.

Ron and I were downsizing, and I couldn’t keep all the pieces — there were hundreds of them. But if I gave them away, I wanted them to be appreciated by others who knew their significance and were captivated by that era in railroad history like mom and I had been.

So I contacted Union Station. When their curators accepted several pieces into their collection — and requested a biography of my grandfather to go along with them — it felt as though those dishes had found their way back home.

And I was happy that part of my family’s story would live on in the station’s archives and displays.

Now I had one promise left.

♡

The Final Promise

Like many people who spend decades searching for answers to life’s biggest questions, Dad left behind a remarkable library. His shelves were filled with books on metaphysics, comparative religion, nature, consciousness, and spirituality.

More than reading material, they had been his companions on a journey that spanned more than 20 years.

I didn’t want them to simply disappear into a thrift store, or worse yet, a landfill.

I’d held on to them as I searched for someplace or someone who would understand their value… study their messages… and give them purpose once again.

Through a series of conversations, I learned about a Unity church that seemed like the perfect fit. The pastor, probably not yet forty, greeted us warmly as we carried the boxes inside.

He explained that the books would become part of their ministry. He planned to use many of them himself and share others with Unity ministers across the country — and even internationally.

Then he told us something I hadn’t expected.

The church also serves as a homeless shelter.

On hot summer nights, around thirty people sleep in the church’s basement. During the winter, when the need is greatest, that number triples. They serve meals. They provide shelter. They offer hope.

Suddenly, I knew Dad’s books hadn’t simply found a library. They, like Mom’s dishes, had found a new home.

His lifelong search for spiritual understanding would continue in a place where ideas were put into practice through conversation and compassion.

As we climbed back into the car, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much my father would have appreciated that.

Ron and I didn’t talk much on the way home that day. I spent most of the ride deep in thought.

I realized I’d spent the past several years finding the right places — for my parents’ ashes… Mom’s treasures… and Dad’s books. These connections with them had been mine alone and I’d found where each belonged.

Then, as we pulled into the driveway, it suddenly became clear why I felt so good.

Those three promises? I hadn’t made them to my parents.

I’d made them to myself.

Mom and Dad had been at peace for years.

Now I finally was.