Ashes on my forehead

I didn’t intend to get ashes on my forehead. 

I didn’t even know it was Ash Wednesday.

I walked into the coffee shop where I used to practice church before cancer, to get some paperwork signed, and sat down across from the piercing blue eyes of the main man who tells the stories.  The sun shone on both of us and my eyes filled up. 

I don’t wipe the tears away anymore. 

I like the feeling of being marked.

I tell him this crappy table we’re sitting at feels like a confessional.
He asks me if I want to get ashed.
I’ve never gotten ashed.
I think he says, “Do you want to be imposed upon.”
“If I say yes, is it an imposition?”
He takes out a small baggie labeled “500 people.”
How do they know that?  Who measures the ratio of ash to faces?

I am marked with a cross and the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”
I tell him I wish I could stay here in this sunlight and his benevolence forever.  I like to feel so small and safe.

Later, I walk into the climbing gym where I know nearly no one, and I feel the stares. 
I stare back because I want someone to ask me. 

“Ask me why I have ashes on my face.  I dare you,” I think. 

Ask me so I can tell you this mark is not proof of my membership in a religious sect or my alliance with an ideology. 

I belong to a society of sufferers, a subculture called cancer moms.

I wear ashes on my face because I know the truth in my brittle burnable bones: we are dust and to dust we will return, and most of what we do in between is also dust.
These ashes are the visible marker. 
These ashes are the “live like you could die tomorrow” bumper sticker stuck to my forehead.

These ashes feel like relief.

You can’t control the stories people tell about you. 
But can’t you? 
At least a little bit? 

I want people to know I’m a cancer mom, not because I’m defined by it but because something this life-altering should be obvious. 

I want people to know what I carry. 

And as I write that, I think, “Why? Why does that matter to me?”
Because I want grace and I want compassion.  And while I wish we all just DID THAT for each other because every human deserves it, I know that we are campfire storytellers and context creates compassion. 
I want you to know what I carry.