Thinks and Feels
I’m doing a lot of processing of this morning’s events. Dad and I went for coffee/tea with Bryan, then Bryan went to school and Dad and I headed for the funeral home to pick up Mom’s ashes (I refuse to use the word “cremains”) and take them to the columbarium. Holding the box in the car was nothing new - I’d done that when Zhuzh died. We got to the cathedral, met with the secretary, talked a bit. She gave us the opportunity to place the grave goods in the urn before the ashes went in - Dad had me put in my great-grandfather’s harmonica and the keychain with my baby picture, and he put in the necklace he’d given her as a wedding gift, her jade band (I think it was jade, anyway - the closest she ever had to an engagement ring), and her wedding ring. Then the secretary asked if one of us would like to pour the ashes into the urn. Dad said “just make it happen,” choked up and unwilling or more likely unable to take that step. So I did. I held the plastic bag containing all that was left of my mother’s body, the body that brought me into this world and suffered so horribly for so many years. It was both lighter and heavier than I would have expected, and the mass of the ashes behind the plastic was soft, malleable. I poured the ashes into the block-shaped urn, and the secretary sealed it, and we went outside, and I pushed the urn into the niche. And that was the end of it. No prayers, no pronouncements. Just Dad and me, and the secretary replacing the front plate with her screwdriver.
In matters of death, I tend to defer. I step aside to facilitate the grief of those around me, to let them have the process. I don’t feel entitled to it. When Zhuzh died, it was Bean’s grief, and my mother’s. When Grandma died last year, it was my father’s grief, and my uncle’s, and my aunt’s. I’ve spent the last nine days deferring to my father’s loss, concerned with his welfare, and I’d have gone on in that, never claiming it for myself. But today, the enormous responsibility of caring for my mother’s remains fell to me, and I carried it. I didn’t stumble.
My mother is dead, and I laid her to rest with my own hands. No ritual I’ve ever performed could carry that kind of weight. What a profound and holy act. I feel her love and her pride in a way I only rarely did while she lived.
In matters of death, I tend to defer. I step aside to facilitate the grief of those around me, to let them have the process. I don’t feel entitled to it. When Zhuzh died, it was Bean’s grief, and my mother’s. When Grandma died last year, it was my father’s grief, and my uncle’s, and my aunt’s. I’ve spent the last nine days deferring to my father’s loss, concerned with his welfare, and I’d have gone on in that, never claiming it for myself. But today, the enormous responsibility of caring for my mother’s remains fell to me, and I carried it. I didn’t stumble.
My mother is dead, and I laid her to rest with my own hands. No ritual I’ve ever performed could carry that kind of weight. What a profound and holy act. I feel her love and her pride in a way I only rarely did while she lived.