Today's prompt is the anti-metaphor, pushing back against images of the beautiful transformational power of grief. The barren trees budding out again in spring. The butterfly emerging from the cocoon.
"I am not your _____." Thinking of a metaphor to argue against, rejecting several, I then come upon a phoenix. I consider it rising from the ashes to begin life anew. I think of ashes. I think of Rader's ashes. Yesterday I wrote about Mt. St. Helens. I think of Mt. St. Helens' ashes.
I am not your verdant mountain, lovely again after decades of recovery and regrowth. I am not new life sprung from tephra, avalanche lilies pushing up through the blast deposits. I am not a phoenix born from ashes.
No life comes from the ashes. They lie inert, in a wooden box shrouded in a reusable bag that bears the name and logo of the funeral home we chose when Rader died — a bag that looks as if perhaps under other circumstances I would carry it grocery shopping. Those ashes represent, no, they are, a life extinguished.
I found a CBS News article from 2015 with the headline: "35 years after Mount St. Helens eruption, nature returns". Nature will not return to the ashes in that box. Neither will I rise to new life with the passing of time. I am not your volcano, recovered.