(Box of Mom and Dad and commingled cremains in the urn. Tribal bedspread by Ralph Lauren. Photo Socotra.)
It was a weird day- not bad, just weird. It was so chill after being so delightful on Saturday, and the stacks of tax records are numbing. I throw things that look like they have tax implications in the small secretary desk by the kitchen all year and only deal with them when the time rolls around.
This year I have the taxes to do for the little company I have- sorry- not creating any jobs there at the moment but I have hope- and the folks, and my personal ones, so I had to make three piles and separate the ones that will have to wait until next year, Mom and Dad’s last tax year.
I spent a couple hours ordering them and stacking them and hunting up last year’s totals.
That was not the problem sole problem, and I was in pretty deep denial. The remains were accusing me all day, Death and Taxes all together on the dining table. I agreed to open the boxes that came from the crematory at Gaylord and mix the ashes so we can have multiple funerals to the satisfaction of the various siblings.
The two white boxes sat there. Mute. I started to open one, and then thought about the ashes inside, and the fact that this was likely to be a messy enterprise. Have you dealt with ashes before? They are not like the campfire or fireplace kind. They have a distinct texture to them, and a clinging slightly sticky consistency that is quite unique.
I have participated in a couple scatterings in my time, the most unusual being off the fantail of the USS Coronado. One of our Warrant Officers in the N2 Division had lost his father, and we got permission to have all our people fall in formation so that the ashes might be scattered off the lovely shores of San Diego.
I talked to Mike Miller, the Coronado’s skipper at the time, and he said it was a tricky bit of ship-handling. “You have to keep enough weigh on the ship so that the apparent wind goes astern, off the flight deck, and you have to be careful so that the ship does not go DIW and the ashes come back aboard.”
Mike was a pretty good ship-handler for an Airdale, and the ceremony went pretty much as advertised, except for a wisp of thin gray that got on everyone’s whites.
Then there was the matter of the fine Japanese Lacquer box, and a pal who sort of wound up all over the backseat of a rental Cadillac…but never mind. There was enough to be apprehensive about, and the fresh wind on the balcony reminded me a lot of standing on the flight deck of the Coronado that day, and I could do nothing to influence the course and speed of the building.
I had the distinct feeling that someone was looking at me as I shuffled papers. Then a friend called. I had seen her over at the Agency the week before, and we talked about The Process that so many of us are going through. In my case, the crisis has passed and it is just the details to deal with like the boxes at the end of the table.
She said: “You know how we talked about cringing when the phone rings, waiting for the phone call?”
“God yes. I would freak out every time I saw the Michigan area code on the caller ID,” I said.
“Well, my brother called me the evening we saw each other and told me I needed to hurry back to Georgia. When I was at the airport, he called me and put me on the phone with Mom. I told her I how much I loved her. I was in Charlotte to change planes, when my brother called me back to say that right after I hung up with Mom, she had taken her last breath.”
“Oh my god,” I said. “That sounds sort of familiar. Eerie, but not frightening.”
“My brother said he had the strong feeling that my Dad, looking like he did in their wedding photo – young and handsome, was in the doorway of her room to come and pick her up.”
“Dead on for what I think happened to my Mom and Dad,” I said. “There is something in this world and the next we do not understand.”
“We miss her, but we know that they are back together again after this year and a half apart. It is a blessing.”
We rang off, and I sat and looked at the boxes in wonder. Time to act, I thought.
The sun was starting to decline into the thin bare branches to the west. I went back to the bedroom and got the fancy engraved urn I ordered and took it out to the porch, and then got a sharp knife and began to gingerly slice through the reinforced paper tape that bound the contents securely.
One of the boxes was noticeably heavier than the other, and I assumed it was Bill. I opened the flap on the cardboard box and found a Xerox copy of the original cremation record. The Funeral Director at Shiller’s had told me there would be one outside the plastic box that contained the bag with the ashes, and another inside.
All was in order. I took a larger trash bag to put it in and the urn and got set up on the balcony. Then I opened Mom’s box, and pulled her out. Like Dad, she had a little metal tag affixed to the neck of the heavy plastic sack that identified her as “10340 American Crem,” and Dad was “10339.” I got a Sharpie indelible marker and wrote their names on the side of each bag, and I had a ladle to alternately take a scoop of one and then the other into the urn until I had approximately half the remains co-mingled, together forever.
I wondered if I should mix the contents of the two bags together, and decided against it. If my sister wants to scatter one set in some manner, I will let her sort it out.
I carried Dad back to the dinner table, the transfer complete. He fit in the bottom of the plastic inner box nicely. I set Mom on top, and then applied pressure to get the lid of the box to close. A jet of ash squirted out as I pressed down into the box, and I looked at a dusting of her on the table, a stack of tax receipts and the tribal rug.
So, Mom will be with this house for a while, at least on a molecular level.
I got the box re-sealed and the urn put away with a vast sense of relief. When everyone was pretty much where they were supposed to be I sat back down at the dining table and looked blankly at the paperwork and the faint dusting of gray.
Wish I had got further on taxes, I thought, but this was a project that seemed to have been quite enough for the weekend.
(Betty is 10340; Bill is 10399. In the box, Betty is on top. In the urn, they are together forever. Photo Socotra.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com