Tag Archives: urn

I Picked Up My Mom. The last time was a month ago.

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She was in a thick Tupperware like container.  Black.  The black box.  I thought of the NTSB.  Was this the size of the unit found after an accident?  If I were to plug it in would it give the reasons surrounding her death?

I reached to pull her out of the funeral home gift bag.  There was no crinkly paper sticking out of the top.   How heavy are ashes?  The box was heavier than I imagined. The thought must have been the influence of too many movies.  I remember scenes where ashes were dusted on gardens, into oceans, and over cliffs where particles spread in the breeze.  It took both my hands to lift her.

In the end a full hug embrace helped her stand.  I felt bones under her skin.  Now she was contained.  Were these the remnants of the skeletal frame which was once upon in time?

Marge asked me how I was “doing.”

The black box sat between us like a punctuation mark.

I asked Marge how she was “doing.”

She showed me the giraffe material.  It was the spotty skin of a giraffe like the spots I counted on my mother’s arm.  Her ashes would be poured into cloth skin.  No Tupperware.

I thought of all the tears.  It was a small room that couldn’t contain them.  Now, a month later, I regret not sealing those drops in Tupperware. They have since evaporated.  Oh, to pour them in over top of my mother’s remains.  All our salt water sprinkled to help preserve her memory a bit longer.

 

“You have seen me tossing and turning through the night.  You have collected all my tears and preserved them in your bottle! You have recorded every one in your book.”  Psalm 56:8  The Living Bible.

“Sorrow, like the river, must be given vent lest it erode its bank.”  Earl A. Grollman

 

“I Picked up Mom Today”

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That is all I saw in the message from my sister Marge.  For a millisecond the recent events were suspended above me.  My hypothalamus wrinkled.  Beads of sweat started stringing together in the crease around my neck.  My hormones told each other it was a false alarm before my brain kicked in.  Mom is dead.

The full message read:  “I picked up Mom today at Langeland Funeral Home and she is safely nestled in the living room pending her burial.”  “She is” was what Marge wrote.  Her remains were in an urn nestled in a “living” room.  Had Marge lost it?  Did she forget that mom went bye-bye to the sweet bye and bye?  We all had sent my mother off with respect and honor and tears and mourning.   Did she not know that my mother was not contained in a little box?  Mom was outside of it.  “Margie, get a grip.”

Seriously, not one of my siblings questioned her sanity.  Neither did I.  We all entered in to what appeared to be a delusional conversation.  It was not weird, because we had a grief clause.  Grief is lawless and is no respecter of persons.  So my mother’s ashes were her to us.  If anyone would tell us differently we would pull out our grief clause.  We would either wave it in their face of insensitivity or hand it gently to their sincere concern.   Those who have been under this lawless dominion would never question our break from reality.  Contrary wise, they would enter in with grace and comfort.  They certainly did.

If ashes had DNA, my mom’s were in a box in Marge’s living room, nestled.  What an appropriate word.  Nestled.  It is a transitive and intransitive verb.

Transitive:  comfortable position; to settle into a position that feels comfortable, warm, and safe, or to lay a part of the body in such a position.

Intransitive:  be secluded; be in a sheltered or secluded place.

Thank God her ashes were not in a tray.  Presumably, they were nestled near the sofa.  I wondered how it would go if I had been the one to pick her up and nestle her?  She would not last long.  Buford the bloodhound would knock her clean off the coffee table with his bull whip tail.  The kids might mistake the urn for a fish food container and feed the guppies.  Someone might lift her up to dust underneath and her ashes to ashes would all fall down.

Mom and Marge, I mean neither of you any disrespect.  I beg you in urn-est to forgive my adolescent imagination.  Did I just write that?  Sheesh!

Now I feel terrible.  Terrible because I know one recent morning my sister walked past the living room to make some coffee and stopped short.  She saw my mom sitting there and emotions gushed from her ducts.  She thought she could keep mom in a box.  Mom’s ashes might as well have been rubbed on her forehead on a Wednesday.  Our Lenten grief pasted on her until Easter morning.  Resurrection then is her one hope of reunion.  He is risen.  Marge will rise.