10/20/2024 0 Comments Returning Home![]() Last week my siblings and I transported our parents' ashes to South Dakota, bringing the long lives of two people full circle. Ruth Jane (Chase) Grotta was born in Willow Lake. She didn't talk about "final wishes" with us, but had mentioned to my younger sister the desire to be buried beside her mother in the Collins Cemetery. It was not until after Mom's passing that I understood the significance of this. Her mother, the grandmother I never knew, Avis Allegra (Berry) Chase died young. My mother's entire life played out against the backdrop of this early childhood trauma. Now she has returned to her home town on the eastern prairie of South Dakota, and her mother's side. Gerald Lou Grotta was born in Esmond. The town no longer exists. We placed his ashes, along with his second wife Alpha's, in the cemetery where Dad's parents are interred. It seems fitting for a man who left behind Depression-era rural poverty to strive for success in the big wide world. Sioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota. Dad would be comfortable knowing he's close to his parents - his roots - and yet in the "big city," not tucked away in a forgotten pasture. Two very different people, finding rest in two very different places. Their four children are each distinctly unique from each other, and yet we share those same South Dakota roots. I felt the tug of the history and the land as we made this journey.
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