At first, my son's bagged ashes sat on the bar, in a fine ceramic bowl, with his favorite baseball cap mostly concealing its evidence. I would dip into the bag and take parts of him with me and leave parts of him wherever. He's in various streams and springs and under huge boulders in his beloved Rockies. I dug a tiny hole at my parent's gravesite and left some there. He adored them and they adored him so it had to be. He traveled with us to the east coast and so some of him remained there and at various lovely spots on our cross-country drive. He's on Haleakala, Kilauea, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. I hope the Hawaiians understand. He's at White Sands and Taos, Tucson, and Death Valley. Yosemite and the grand redwoods of California have claimed him, too. He's visiting the far east with his brother right now and will soon head for parts of Europe. He left so much of himself behind in every place he went while alive, it seems only fitting that he should continue to so after his death.
19
Love this writing, Ms Boylan, and readers' comments, which have felt so comforting. I've scattered my husband's ashes everywhere I've gone since his unexpected death almost nine years ago: in the waters of Cabo Pulmo Marine Preserve that first Christmas; all around our garden paths and beds he built and in the compost bins he lovingly turned; in the waters at Carlsbad and Laguna Beaches and in the sand at Atlantic Beach and Sunset Beach where he loved flying his trick kite; on Goat Rock Island, CA, throughout our NC walking trails and the mountain waters at Pearson's Falls, on the water's edge at North Beach, O'ahu, and over the grasses in a small sacred burial grounds in Kauai the second Christmas. The ashes came in a gray plastic box. Just looking at the box made me weep. I was timid about handling them, but soon I scooped out ashes with a little measuring cup, put them in a small plastic bags, and took them with me on trips. When I climbed to the top of Gorham Mountain at Acadia National Park, ME, last August, I waited for a quiet moment to release Peter's ashes into the bright Maine air. I thought of William Cullen Bryant's message in his poem "Thanatopsis" - So live!
7
My parents' ashes are at Arlington National Cemetery. The second placement, for my mother, was at the height of cherry blossoms, a gray, soggy day, good for visiting the FDR Memorial. The wall of niches, with inscriptions visible, is accessible on Google Street View, which hasn't been updated for some time. It's a somewhat active wall. Others, much more so.
3
I like the instructions of the bar habitue to flush his ashes down the urinal since that's where all his money went anyway.
2
There's a group in Seattle that, if all goes according to plan, will start composting human bodies in 2023. Jews, of course, have been doing that for thousands of years, but the Seattle project will bring new technology to the process.
I think it's a good process--in the end life (of which death is a part) begets life.
But I'm still holding out for the Soylent Green option.
2
My wife recently passed away from ovarian cancer. We spread her ashes in a creek leading to the sea. I told my children I wanted my ashes spread there also and my daughter said likewise. Today would have been her 72nd birthday. Yes, it is illegal to spread ashes with 3 miles of the shore. Please don't use the word cremains. I don't like that word-ashes please.
6
Dad's ashes were blended into a mountain steam a few years after he passed. However, mom's, after almost four years, are still with me. Somehow, I can't turn them lose. She had a pretty hard life and I feel like she might feel alone, abandoned perhaps. It is I, of course, who feels alone. I was hoping, I suppose, that an exception might have been made in her case. R.I.P. Mary
5
The ashes provided to family after a cremation actaully account for a small portion of the deceased body. Much of what is left is disposed of in a manner family members likely would find disturbing.
4
Dad has been gone 20 years. He is everywhere and there is still lots of him left. A 9th grade dropout (Depression), he finally made it to Harvard which should irritate my deceased PhD. mother. He loved his army days in Boston and we enjoyed researching where he spent his time. Yep, he is in Scollay Square. A Swede, some of Dad is on this wonderful trail overlooking Stockholm's Gamla Stan. A Pittsburgh native, he is all over that city, in his garden, at Forbes Field, near Roberto Clemente's statue on the North Side. He is also near his two favorite, now closed, bars in Ambridge, Pa. And you can find him around San Francisco because he would have loved the outdoor areas here. You won't find him in water. Dad couldn't swim. It has been a joy the past twenty years to take him places that either he enjoyed or would have enjoyed.
11
When my father died in 1967, my mother bought a double plot and buried him. Mom died last April, nearly 50 years after my father and we buried her next to him. My brother who was her caregiver in her final years died 6 weeks later at 50. He was cremated and his remains were interred in their plot in a stone urn with his name/dates on it. His name was added to the plot's tombstone. He never married (unlike his siblings). We didn't want him spending eternity alone and burying him with the father he never knew and the mother he devoted the last 10 years of his life to, seemed entirely appropriate.
FWIW: The article makes no mention of the religious directions about cremains. (I'm not an observant Catholic but my parents were and my brother was concerned at Mom's service about having Communion without having recently going to Confession. I assured him he wouldn't go to hell.) The Catholic church changed it's policies to allow cremation but the bodies prior to cremation and the cremains are to be treated as sacred and buried in consecrated grounds with the proper prayers, NEVER scattered or abandoned.
6
I'm not always a fan of this author's columns. But this one, simply spectacular writing. When she hits it, it's outta the ballpark. And I don't meet over the outfield wall, but over the roof!
2
"Ashes to ashes", as it should be. Do you find any animal remains in a coffin? Never. Besides why pay for expensive caskets when the idea is to be one with the Earth. Man makes everything, including his death complicated!
1
There is a scene in the movie Little Big Man in which an old chief says it is a good day to day and he is taken out to a platform above ground on which to die and return to the world. Well, it doesn't work out that way but the meaning is so clear.
Buried is so claustrophobic, and cremation so, well, so owie. But to contribute to the life cycle of the earth from which my body came? I like it: debt repaid; pay it forward.
2
Everyone preparing his will should specify how he wants his ashes disposed. To eliminate any questions for my children, I directed that the crematorium would dispose of my ashes.
2
My Dad had specific wishes for his ashes. First, he wanted the crematorium to send him home in a Maxwell House coffee can, which my Mom provided. He stayed on a table in his pool room until later in the summer, when we drove him from Ohio to Missouri, where he grew up and his family is buried in a long forgotten cemetery in the middle of miles of fields and meadows. We found a tree overlooking the cemetery and scattered most of his ashes there. We played some Tom Waits songs and had a bourbon toast to him. A friend of his took a small portion of the ashes and made earrings for me and my sister. My Mom has some inside a necklace. Mom saved some more to be mixed with hers and scattered when she passes. I would like mine to be used to grow a tree. Or maybe I won't be cremated at all, but can get one of those mushroom suits so I "compost" into nature.
4
A friend of my aunt passed away and asked her ashes be scatterd off the beach in Hawaii. An outrigger canoe with paddlers was secured but my aunt refused to board. So my mom and dad hopped in, urn in hand. Paddled out, prayer made, flower lei and ashes put in the water. An unexpected wave hit the canoe and flipped it over. The way my mom tells the story makes everyone laugh.
I told my sister when I die, I'd like her to scatter my ashes at sea. She refuses because she thinks I'm going to flip the canoe over. Despite my assurances, she doesn't believe me.
4
I wasn't aware of a 'green burial' until I read this. My 38 year old son passed suddenly last fall. He was a botanist and would love this option. Thanks Jennifer!
13
My condolences to you and your family.
3
I've been pondering for some time what to do with loved one's cremains and I have been searching for answers about rituals and beliefs surrounding cremation. There are three in our family resting in boxes on shelves. One sibling and two parents. Periodically the subject comes up with my siblings and we discuss the options but we are left with indecision on the matter. I am so grateful to the author for writing on the subject and all the commenters who have shared their experiences. Thank you.
4
Poor Sydney Greenstreet, supporting actor in Bogart movies Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Stuck on a shelf in a utility storage closet at the Forest Lawn Glendale Mausoleum. Since 1954.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/420/sydney-greenstreet
1
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
13
My father's ashes were interred in a local cemetery, except for a large handful that I let go of as I dived into the lake at our cottage, in much the same fashion as I watched my father dive in for so many years. My brother, who died in 2013 (the same year as my father), had suggested before he died that we scatter his ashes around the family cottage property, and this has been partially accomplished by my surviving brother. I also took some with me out to British Columbia last year and scattered them on mountains and near vistas that I know my brother would have liked - he loved the west coast. And now, the remaining ashes sit in a drawer in my home office, awaiting his birthday next July, when I hope to take them on a long hike through the woods that he loved near our cottage, and scatter them there, amidst the birds and woodland creatures that he found so much peace with.
11
The internment or dispersal of remains should be completed ASAP!
2
Or not. One size does not fil all.
3
Because why exactly?
6
Ms. Boylan, your piece has warmed my heart. My only child, my daughter, passed away 4 years ago. It gave me great pleasure to read that Dorothy Parker's cremains were held for fourteen years prior to internment. My daughter had a beautiful tattoo, a quote in recognition of Dorothy Parker, tattooed across her collarbone, "What Fresh Hell Is This." Though, shocking, I'm sure to some, I loved her tattoo. I knew the meaning. I loved my daughter, the tattoo, and her beautiful collarbone.
My daughter gave me specific instructions for her ashes. I do intend to follow through with her wishes. After reading your article, I believe my daughter has let me know that I have another ten years and then I must let her go. I will try to be ready.
17
My parent's ashes are in a niche located in a huge cemetery in the town in which they lived for over 40 years. I visit them upon occasion. When I do, I do not feel much, except to note the passage of time. And yet-- they are each with me, in different ways every day. With Mom in the way I tend my home and my loved ones, with Dad in the way I look at the world through a macro lens. I think cremation is best-- takes up less space and resources in a shrinking world. But when it's my time-- my ashes will be scattered in the wind, on a hill or mountain with a view-- the laws and customer of the spot be damned. I believe those who loved me will not need a drawer to visit in order to remember and celebrate me-- the decent person I tried so hard to be.
27
I had no problem when it came to dealing with my brother's ashes.
Flush, flush.
1
My family knows that I want my ashes mixed and scattered with those our late, beloved dogs (Merlin, Hana, Ben and Buddy), as well as the ashes of any of our current dogs (Jenny, Buzz, Jack and Riley) who pre-decease me. Half of my ashes will be tossed off a mountain here in Colorado, and half will go into the ocean off Emerald Isle, NC.
One dilemma: I’m still trying to decide whether to take just the ashes of our yellow Lab, Hana (who jumped in every body of water she ever saw), into the Atlantic with me. The rest of the dogs would never willingly get wet, and I’m not sure that I want to spend eternity with a pack of dogs giving me the collective stink eye.
6
When my kids ask, I tend to say, "Cat food." What I'd really like is a snarky or brilliant gravestone for strangers to enjoy--but the body--I dunno. Med school? Lake Erie? Under the tomato plants? Hate to leave my kids to decide, but heck, I really don't care, as I don't intend to go with it.
5
When my good friend died his wife wanted to cremate him but his mother wouldn't have it so he was buried.
When his mom died his wife had him disintered and cremated and his mom placed there.
My friends remains are now home with his wife atop the mantel.
8
My family gathered to scatter my mother's ashes in the harbor inlet on Block Island, RI on a Memorial day weekend 18 years ago, a place they visited annually. My father's ashes (or half of them) joined hers several years later.
I manage to visit the location by kayak every time I go out to the island. In a crazy world, it's my Happy Place.
7
I went alone to pick up my father's ashes from the funeral home this summer. There'd been no wake or funeral service. My dad would've hate that.
I drove to the house where he'd lived for 40 years, where I'd grown up. I just wanted to check on the place. I left the ashes on the backseat of the car, in their container which was held in a blue bag with a Grecian design that reminded me of those paper coffee cups that bodegas used to use.
Halfway to the front door I stopped. I began debating whether or not to leave my father's ashes behind. Wouldn't he want to go into his beloved home one final time? Honestly, I paced back and forth, changing directions like a weather vane, until I collected the blue bag and brought it with me. I felt silly and proud at the same time.
I still have dad's ashes. The blue bag is in my wardrobe in my apartment. Perhaps I'm clinging to them (to him). I'm not sure. I do know that he'd want to be among nature, where he spent some of his favorite days. But not just yet. We'll wait for spring, when everything is new again.
11
I hope some med school somewhere can benefit from my passing by turning me into cold cuts. After that, a nice spot in a forest glen.
1
Personally I do not care where my ashes end up, but to keep my family from trying to decide what to do. Since I am a disabled veteran I will have them placed in the VA Burial grounds near where we live. It is as simple as you can get. I have seen many ashes tossed and everyone gets them blown in their face from wind.
My real option was to have someone bake them into a big batch of chocolate "Brownies" that everyone will eat some.
1
Having ashes means there is still a physical remain of a much loved person or pet. I still have a beloved dog's ashes in an attractive ceramic container on the mantelpiece, a photo of him next to it. Told my brother to dump my ashes in Central Park lake, inspired by an ex-boyfriend who boarded a plane and flew to Disney world, carrying his wife's ashes to inter the lake of her favorite place on earth.
3
Disposing of ashes in Central Park, while not illegal, is prohibited. If it matters.
Also, a very popular place for dumping the ashes in DisneyWorld is The Haunted Mansion. Disney (and their employees) hate this, because they monitor the rides on video and when they see it happen, they have to stop the ride, hustle everyone out of the attraction, and send in a clean-up crew.
1
My father was cremated after he died in 2010 and my mother and I spread some of his ashes in some of his favorite places. My mother's only wish was to be cremated and to have her ashes join my father's in his urn. After that, it was up to me to do with them as I saw fit. My mother died this past June and per her request, I added her ashes to his urn. They had so much fun traveling together during their marriage and there were many places they loved to visit and I knew they would love to re-visit them again. To make this task easier, I bought a stainless steel parmesan cheese shaker (with a plastic cover) into which I placed some of both of their ashes. It has been fun and very meaningful spreading their ashes in this manner in the places they loved, and I know they would approve of this method and get a kick out of it too!
7
The quote from Galway Kinnell is somewhat different different here than it is in his original poem "Flower of Five Blossoms". The last verse of the poem, from which the quote is derived, is excerpted here: http://poetrymala.blogspot.com/2009/04/excerpt-from-flower-of-five-bloss...
And you can find "Flower of Five Blossoms" in its entirety here: https://daily.jstor.org/seven-favorite-flower-poems/
2
My aunt died, at the age of 91, having lived her whole life in the Dover area of England overlooking the English Channel - a view she loved. We, the remaining nieces and nephews, all met a couple of months after her cremation and we went down to the beach underneath the white cliffs. There we went to the edge of a pier and scattered her ashes into the swirling waters. Just as we did so the sun emerged from behind the clouds for about 30 seconds and gave us all a tingling sensation, and we felt that we had done the right thing.
18
I made a road-trip comedy feature film ("Detours," available on Amazon Prime) a few years ago. A major part of the story is that the father and daughter - who are driving from NJ to Florida - plan to scatter the wife/mother's ashes in the ocean, after the ashes spent years in a coffee can in the kitchen.
It was only 3 months after the release of the movie that I had to deal with my father's death and his ashes. Six months after that, it was my youngest sister's death and her ashes.
I find that the memories that I carry in my heart matter far more than the ashes themselves. But like the mother in my movie, I'd love to have my ashes scattered in the ocean.
4
I too think ashes are sacred and that the soul already rose like a phoenix from them to go onto a better place or transition into another dimension, one that is spiritual and not physical. I think they should always be handled with respect as they represent a human being. A life lived. A person loved.
My closest cousin has two urns on a mantelpiece, the remains of her parents, and she derives comfort from seeing them there each day. That is not for me though, after cremation I want burial rather than be in an urn passed around like the proverbial fruitcake for generations after those who knew me are long gone.
Essentially my dust would be within a container that would become, ironically, a dust collector in some unknown to me household of the future, and the essence of who I was would fade from memory. I would just become a housekeeping problem.
4
I had a friend who passed at age 90 in 2010. He was a WW2 submarine sailor. After WW2, he got an engineering degree, and went to work for the Underwater Sound Lab in Groton Connecticut. He would often go to sea in new submarines to take technical measurements of the ship's sound performance.
In the 1960s, he was scheduled to go on a sea trial. His wife had a nightmare premonition, and pleaded with him to not go on that mission. So, my friend, to appease his wife, called in sick, and someone else went in his place. That sea trial mission turned out to be the doomed voyage of the USS Thresher, which was lost at in the Atlantic in thousands of feet of water.
My friend confided to me that he always felt personally guilty that someone was on the Thresher, in his place on that fatal mission.
When he died, he specified he was to be cremated. His ashes were then taken out to sea to the Thresher site, and buried at sea. It was his wish to join the others who were on the mission he missed.
12
Ashes are handy. They can be split up and given to several family members to deposit them in multiple meaningful locations.
When my wife and I went to Paris 20 years ago, our dear friend Fred gave us money to buy a bottle of wine, as long as we drank it while sitting on a bench at the Square du Vert-Galant. This is a small park accessible from the Pont Neuf, with a beautiful panorama of the city. When Fred died several years later, we again visited that spot, this time with some of his ashes, which were poured from a small vial into the river. At the moment of launch, a wine bottle we also brought tipped over inexplicably. We knew Fred was with us, and approved.
Grandma Sadie - A discrete portion of her ashes are now at Monet's garden.
My mom has already identified the Aspen grove in the Sierras where she wants to be scattered.
My mother-in-law died last week. Her fear of flying prevented her from visiting England, even though she was such an Anglophile. She always admired pictures of the English garden at Anne Hathaway's cottage in Stratford....
You get the idea.
8
Thank you for this thought-provoking article. I have very especially enjoyed the comments of people who have lost dear ones.
My maternal grandmother died in 1967, my dad in '68. Mom's brother took "control" of their ashes, always intending to scatter them in Humboldt County (California), but sort of "forgot." As it happened, on the 10th anniversary of Dad's death, Uncle and his current girlfriend, a gal from up in Humboldt, were at Mom's home in Marin County, when I told everyone what day it was. This prompted Uncle to say that he "had Dad and Ma's ashes in the trunk of his car." (He'd been driving them back and forth, lo these 10 years!) His girlfriend was horrified and told him it was "ghastly!" and promptly broke off their relationship. Forward to 1993 when Mom died (uncle preceded her by 5 years,) so my brothers and I, following her wishes, interred them all - Mom and Dad together in one small grave, Uncle and Grandma in a second one at our local cemetery. We still laugh at the thought of those cremains in the back of Uncle's little MBZ 280SL!
Another family favorite involves my cousin, M, whose husband P, a devoted and very generous Cal alum, died a few years ago. The Cal Memorial stadium was being renovated, and when the appropriate moment arrived, the AD called M, who took P's ashes and so he now lies under the turf under the script "Cal" at midfield. He's love it!
7
My mother, in her 90s, suffered from progressively worse dementia/memory impairment. She spent three years in my home where, under great stress, I cared for her. Finally, when she would no longer get out of bed, she had to go to a nursing home, where she spent the final six months of her life.
It was odd, but not surprising. During those three and a half years, her brother and sister never came to visit. When my mother finally passed, I told no one, and had her cremated. Her only firm and rational wish was that she be buried with my father.
I collected the ashes, then called the cemetery management to arrange a private burial in the plot, without the assistance of a funeral director. This was in July. My mother had never had an opportunity to ride in a new Corvette convertible I had bought the year before. So, the day of the scheduled burial of her urn, I decided to put it in a canvas bag, and place the bag on the passenger seat of the Corvette. And off we went the 120 miles to the cemetery, roof down. The cemetery staff told me it was the first time they remember a new resident coming to them in a Corvette.
I had a very odd feeling about the ashes and the urn. For some reason, I did not want it in the house with me. I left it in the garage the three days I had it.
My mother would have enjoyed the Corvette ride. Years ago, I had one, and she got a kick out of riding in it. She even drove it on a trip once.
10
As far as the legality, I believe that you don't ask.
We placed my dad's ashes (deceased in August 2107) into a southern Missouri river he had enjoyed fishing and floating. While we can't say for certain whether he had ever stood at that very spot, it was near a spring, full of cold, moving water and clear, crisp December air.
Since my dad didn't leave specific wishes other than cremation and didn't provide any comment during or after our actions (except for the long, slow glide of a bald eagle upriver), it seemed good. And since my mom, suffering with dementia and grief could not agree to a funeral or memorial, we drank a whiskey toast to my dad, there on the bank, to say a final good-bye.
I think you do your best for yourself and the person you honor in this process.
19
God bless!
2
I am looking at the Natural or Green Burial. I would like to be along side a hiking trail if possible. An uplifting message perhaps on my flat marker, if that's possible.
5
I prefer the Jewish tradition of burial in a plain pine box with holes drilled in the bottom. You become part of the soil.
12
The body has been cleaned properly and wrapped in linen. There is no embalming. The all-wooden coffin contains no metal nails, screws, etc.
The Kaddish, a hymn of praises to God found in Jewish prayer services whose central theme is the magnification and sanctification of God's name, is recited. There is no mention of death in the Kaddish...
2
I've instructed my kids to scatter my ashes in nature. Off a bridge, for one half, into a bay for the other. Back to the planet from which I drew life
6
I'm pretty sure that unless your kids put your ashes into space, no matter what else they do with them, you'll be going back to the planet from which you drew life.
2
Would have to say the opinion differs depending upon which side of the urn you find yourself
7
Confetti for a bon voyage party.
2
Great comments on this interesting subject, and I think a common thread is the knowledge that what we do with the ashes of our loved ones, is generally something we're doing for us. We do what they asked, to honor them, or we do something we think they'd approve of. We scatter the ashes in a place we know they liked, or we keep them in an urn at our homes, to feel closer to them.
And there are some who say, the ashes don't matter, and others who say, we should have a physical grave or something so that later generations will remember us. I'd like to point out that later generations will not remember us, no matter what; refer to "Ozymandias" for example. I know of Napoleon Bonaparte, died a mere two centuries ago, but I don't know if he was chipper in the morning, or what his favorite color was. And I definitely don't know a single one of the names from the army he took to their deaths in Russia.
So, my hope is that something of the self continues on after death, because history will not record us well, even if we're the most famous person alive. Y'all might say that's crazy, death is the end, but that seems bleak to me, and I'll enjoy saying "I told you so" later, while that viewpoint offers no chance to do so.
And I guess my overall point is, we should do things with these ashes that seem right to us, that we're happy with; that no other opinion nor tradition matters, in the end.
16
Cremains are inurned rather than interred.
2
Personally, I'd like my dust or ashes to stuff a bunghole. Perhaps mixed with that of Alexander the Great.
2
Perhaps instructive to also recount the practices of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains in India and Nepal, who have traditionally cremated their dead, and floated the ashes away in a river or a sea, so that they may be subsumed by the ocean. Cremation has complex rites associated with it in the Hindu religion, part of a series of "Sanskritising" Vedic rituals that supplanted traditional burial practices, especially in Southern India. Today, more than 80% of Indians are reportedly cremated, and ashes disposed according to community customs and tradition.
4
My sister dug a winding tulip bed in her back yard, and now, every year, Uncle Jimmy and Cousin Greg put on a glorious show. it keeps them with us.
10
I want my ashes taken to Niagara River, upstream a ways from the falls. Then off to my last adventure, a whoosh over the falls, through the whirlpools, out into Lake Ontario and the St, Lawrence Seaway, and out into the Atlantic.
12
What does one do when your significant other is not in agreement with what we want done with our ashes? A ticklish question indeed.
3
Dear Tom,
If your significant other happens to be a woman, then go along with what she wants done with them. She will probably outlive you anyway and thus will be able to veto any compromise. If you wind up outliving her by some chance, then you can have your option carried out instead.
If the ashes and the relationship really meant so much to the writer, why didn't she drive down to Tennessee to deliver them instead of mailing them, thereby avoiding the awkwardness?
This is not the first column I've read by this author. There's always an undercurrent of unexamined narcissism.
2
The comment by Lifelong Reader is one I wish I hadn't read, because now there's a bad taste in my mouth. Why, oh, why does the occasional commenter feel the need to disparage the author of a column in such a hit-and-run fashion? My goodness! If you don't like the author, then don't read the article--and certainly don't malign someone you don't know as a "narcissist," of all things. Simple as that. I, as one among many, apparently, was quite moved by Ms. Boylan's lovely remembrance of her beloved sister-in-law. I even alerted a grieving friend so he could read the touching remarks about the comforts of returning someone's ashes to the "dust we are made of."
3
What an insensitive, highly dubious rambling abuse of a person's memory (and remains) to fulfill the weekly term paper. Please at least try to fake being believable when you write a reminiscence (nobody shock jocks a clerk with "cremated human remains" they say "human ashes.") Then the phony quasi-victim playing: "As my ill luck would have it, I’m the member of my family who thinks of ashes as sacred" when nowhere through this treatment do you act as such, in fact you treat the what left of the deceased with less respect than an interesting bit of sports memorabilia. The gratuitous gender identity shoutout, "... in the house of her former girlfriend ..." and flip inclusion (with photo no less) of a completely unrelated celebrity.
Here's a clue, when you say you think a thing is "sacred" write about it, not about you.
2
Thanks Galway and Jennifer
1
I placed a bit of my late wife's ashes at places she loved: Wisconsin, her memorial bench, the Peak District. I still have a few places to go, 11 years later. ps. What is the name of the poem?
3
I have asked that my ashes are to be left in a secret mountain trout stream that I have fished and deeply loved for many decades. Eventually the ashes will find their way to a river, a bay, an ocean and be forever lost in the abyss.
4
Water urns for ashes can be purchased on-line. The float for 3-4 minutes, then sink, after which the decompose. Since ashes are sterile, they won't contaminate anything. Most municipalities require permits for water burials, but lots of people don't bother with a permit, and they don't seem to be widely enforced.
One idea is to tie (decomposable thread) some light weight flowers to them, which enhances the visual effect of seeing your loved one's urn gently float away.
6
Nothing says more about who we are than the way we think of the vessel we choose for our final trip, one with no clear destination.
A good friend of mine decided to leave to all his descendants a small container with a sample of his ashes. Now he, or they, rest in their living rooms always present at their family events, even those with in-laws or grandchildren he never knew or probably would not care to know one way or the other. I fear the possibility that some maid would someday dispose of those ashes giving them a new definition of what forever means.
A brother-in-law of mine decided to have his ashes spread by an aircraft over the Caribbean. When some of his ashes were blown back into the cabin by the wind, his widow took it as a message that some part of him wanted to stay with her and that small testament of the man’s life rests still on a living room cabinet, evidence that his real last will is still not followed.
But, of course, one is not sure what is meant to be buried in the ground under a sign that reads “We will never forget you,” a promise that eventually does not survive the survivors, but keeps them happy until the time to forget arrives.
3
"Nothing says more about who we are than the way we think of the vessel we choose for our final trip, one with no clear destination."
I respectfully disagree. I don't see the disposition of remains as shedding much light at all on the human condition. I suppose that opinion is shaped by my attitude about my own ashes: my children can do with them anything they like.
1
I'm going to be the voice of dissent here. I want to be buried. I care not if it is in a pine box or an elaborate casket, but I want to be buried among my ancestors at our family cemetery, which is in a rural area where we raise trees and cows on the main and have kitchen gardens.
My parents reserved 8 plots for me and mine when I was a very small child, although since I decided not to have kids, they took our 8 and handed them over to siblings with children and gave us the remaining two prime plots in the old part of the cemetery next to their plots, catty corner from my grandparents and just down the way from my great-grandparents.
There are still acres of the family cemetery left to develop for future generations, where we will all lie together, our caskets and our bodies rotting in time, joining the fertile soil. The places where there are bodies are mostly sodded with lawn grass, but bahia has infiltrated it thoroughly, and people have planted crepe myrtles at random, so it is lovely but not formal. There are pine trees here and there on the verges, providing just the right amount of shade and no more. The cemetery sits on a hill where there is always a wind blowing, bounded on all sides by a dirt road that never sees much traffic and has fences that are perfect for berrying.
This is where we will be buried and lie among those who came before.
4
Oh my, that sounds lovely and peaceful. Anything amongst nature is always glorious.
2
These tales of disposal at meaningful places from life are lovely.
A word of caution though. A little while back there were newspaper reports in the UK where the National Trust was asking people not to scatter remains in the more barren, mountainous regions of England. The minerals in the remains were upsetting the ecology, making them considerably more verdant than they would normally be and upsetting the balance of nature
1
Dear Philip Taylor,
That's an odd caution. Seems like it would take thousands of people dumping ashes every year on one mountain, to get more plants to grow there. There's hardly any useful mineral content in human ashes anyway. And, have you never heard the term "the green hills of England"? I'd think more verdant would be a plus. Lastly, if humans are tromping around somewhere, it is no longer "nature" regardless.
My son, a victim of the opioid crisis, died in 2013. He was thirty-four. Although I have given small portions of his ashes to his sister and mother, who both live in other states, I have kept the bulk of his remains as I cannot yet abide the thought of his complete and total physical absence. Crazy, I know. But there you have it. Grief sometimes requires a totem.
17
I love this story. Ten years or so ago, our family gathered at our place in Big Sur with my mother's ashes which she'd always said she wanted buried beneath a particular redwood tree. My brother brought his best friend's ashes, and my sister-in-law brought her daughter's. We ate and drank and told stories about our loved ones. I keep my niece's ashes in a little pink cloisonne urn in my bedroom. In retrospect my brother named the event the Ash Fest.
1
Many, many years ago, right after I met the wonderful man who'd eventually (thanks to the Supreme Court) become my husband, we took our first vacation together to the Center Harbor, NH and one magical fall afternoon we took a walk to Squam Lake and sat by the shore with our arms around each other enjoying the sun, cool weather and the riot of fall colors around us. I turned to John who was looking out on the water and realized "dude, this is the one" and before I could say anything, a loon called out in the distance. This is where we'd like our ashes to go where a speck of each of us may eventually find its way to the Connecticut River and return us to the state that we first called home together. It's symbolic and we'll be long forgotten but it's how we want to spend eternity together.
2
I don't care what my family does with my remains. My mother loved to travel, and when she died I thought we could divide up her ashes and carry them in the trunks of our cars so we could always be taking her places. But she became a Catholic not long before she died, and so her ashes could only be taken to a religious cemetery, not necessarily Catholic. I think of her now, with her remains across the country and stuck in one place, and hope she is on to other pursuits and doesn't mind.
2
Not to seem terribly practical about a topic that otherwise is so emotionally dear to us, but I had a friend who worked with a grave digger for several years. We always bought coffee at the same time and at the same place. Each time, he would share his estimate of the total cost of the caskets that they had buried that day. Costs would range anywhere from $$50,000 to $150,000 - caskets that were seen for a few hours, but then buried for eternity. Cremation can cost far less and ashes can remain wherever you want them.
3
My sister told me where she wants her ashes sprinkled, and since she has her cat's ashes at home, she wants those mixed with hers. But I worry about what her cat would have wanted...probably not to be sprinkled into a river!
2
As another has mentioned here.....my personal desire is to have my empty husk dragged into the woods and left for the elements to reclaim....I see no indignity or blasphemy in such an act, but more of a real representation of the value of our physical remains to the environment from which we all began.
1
Is it possible to dwell too much on ourselves? A question I constantly ask, much to my dismay. I sure hope my dust isn't as sentient.
2
Kinnell poem quoted is from Flowers of Five Blossoms
3
I spread my departed wife's ashes in an alpine meadow near the same place I placed those of my mother - in full view of a snow capped mountain.
3
Frizbane’s Cemetery
I have long thought that cemeteries are essentially wasted plots of real estate that have great potential for improving our lives. When my sons were pre-school, they loved to romp in the local graveyard. So at Frizbane’s Cemetery, instead of tombstones – and what’s that all about? – we will have remarkably durable playground structures made of marble, granite, steel, and plastic ... and with very small plaques commemorating the lives of the deceased contributors discretely displayed for all to see and appreciate.
Of course, there will be swimming pools (and can’t you just envision the Frizbane Manley Memorial three-meter board), lawn bowling, shuffleboard, ice skating rinks, skateboard parks -- the possibilities are limited only by one’s imagination -- and the whole kit and caboodle will be financed by the cremated dead. I happen to think cemeteries are close to absurd in principle, and I break out in a smile whenever I imagine graveyards all over the country being gradually transformed into playgrounds. I realize it cannot happen overnight, but just give me a decade or so ...
Now do you want to hear about Frizbane Manley’s Science Centers and Frizbane’ Manley's Prisons?
3
If Greenwood cemetery did not exist in Brooklyn, or Woodlawn in the Bronx, New York City would have another 850 acres of teeming development, instead of the green open space these park like garden cemeteries represent. Cities could use more, not fewer, well kept cemeteries.
4
When my father was dying 4,000 miles away after a brief illness, I was only able to say goodbye to him by phone. When my sister and I put his ashes in the ocean, the current swirled them around my feet. In the warm salt water his ashes turned the color of his skin. It was as if I was with him one last time.
7
A Columbarium holds cremated ashes in a permanent receptacle. Most cemeteries offer storage space at small price that you can buy now. Arlington National Cemetery has now installed many columbarium receptacles that should allow many more people that meet requirements to rest there. While it may not be an item for NY Times readers, the Catholic Church requires that you make arrangements for the ashes before it will have a Mass for the cremated remains. The Church and many other denominations consider the remains sacred and will not be part of a disposal, if that is your choice.
Ashes are really pulverized bones, the only remnant of a cremation. They are exactly what will eventually remain in a buried casket once you eventually decay. They should have the same status.
3
The Catholic Church only recently came out with this latest requirement. Thank goodness a favorite Catholic relative was able to be buried at sea (in a formal ceremony, from a US Navy Ship) before this directive came out - it was what he specifically requested, after serving a long career in the Navy. It's one thing to declare that ashes are sacred. It's another to decide that there is only one acceptable form of honoring that sacredness. One that, oh, BTW, generates income for Catholic cemeteries.
My mother has been in the bedroom closet since her death almost 3 years ago. At some point my wife and I will bring her east to bury her next to my father’s ashes in Staten Island, but for now it’s comforting to have her nearby.
2
Both my parents were cremated at their request. In both cases, I spent time meditating with their ashes. Then they were interred by my hands in a military cemetery. First my father, then 10 years later my mom. We had a lay person who read Hebrew say prayers over my father's grave, then a rabbi said prayers over my mother. Although their final resting place is across the country in Nevada, I periodically visit their graves and it is cathartic to cry there. I am grateful that I have a location to mourn them, but I did not want to have them hanging around my home, because the ashes are not my parents, they are only their remains. When I die, I hope someone will scatter me in New York Harbor, which might be illegal.
2
Human life, as any others, is brief but uniquely precious...while it lasts. Thereafter, it must return to Nature, where it belongs. Sacredness, in my estimation, belongs to make-believe theistic religions, a human creation to appease our anguish of dying...and not ascending (or descending?) to eternal bliss thereafter.
1
This is very lovely. My aunt passed away last year and my cousin keeps the urn with her ashes in the china cabinet in her dining room. It's almost like she's still with her, in a way. I'm one of those people who think ashes are precious, and the loving way in which my cousin has "housed" my aunt's ashes - surrounded by her Rosary beads and my aunt's familiar objects - has been a comfort in the time following her death.
My parents have also elected to be cremated when their time comes, and have chosen wall niches in a lovely mausoleum that is part of a historic and well-maintained cemetery. I feel at ease knowing that they will be resting in a place of their choosing that is kept up well. The cemetery in which my grandparents rest is not always maintained as well as it could be, and beyond tending to the headstone there is very little we as a family can do. My grandmother actually wanted to be cremated and have her ashes interred alongside my long-dead grandfather's casket, but a relative who was against cremation spooked her with all kinds of hideous (and false) stories, so in the end she, unfortunately, decided against it.
Our cremains are not us, any more than a corpse in a casket is "us"; our essence has either flown away at death to a different plane of existence or simply continues to live on in the hearts and minds of our loved ones and those whose lives we've touched. The acceptance of ashes as such can be a beautiful thing during a sad time.
Years ago while considering final resting places for our family, I visited Forest Hills Cemetery, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Not only was I impressed by the gorgeous grounds, but also the welcoming visitor policies (picnicking allowed!) and the multiple interment options-- including simply pouring ashes into a hole in the ground.
2
My parents both expressed wishes to be cremated and scattered even though both had burial plots arranged by their respective parents. My mother settled for space in our garden while my father chose a cove on the ocean, nearby. My father also left a hint over his desk, a faded place mat of a picture taken on the top of Mt. Washington, our first father-son mountain hike. These were places of fond family memories. I spent a year with my mother before she passed and I sensed her (and my father's) greatest concern was being forgotten. Memories are the soul of existence. I purchased a monument for the garden, a sundial, with room for all of us, and every day think of old times. From a memory perspective, I prefer having them close by, in the garden, rather than in a cemetery miles away.
4
To me, burial seems lonely.
My husband and I have a plan. When we have both passed, our ashes (along with the ashes of the pets we have loved during our lives) will be combined and all scattered together over the ocean.
4
My parents said they'd like their ashes (along w/ their three cremated dogs) scattered in the Caribbean island where they met. I have custody of all but my mother, who is still with us in her mid-90s. That seems like a nice way to close the circle of their lives.
I'll be cremated; I've a mental list of places where I'd like my ashes spread. I picture this as a way for my children/family to see places I have loved--some first experienced with them on vacations, others not visited by any of them. This is a fantasy, of course, but I wish they could see these sites through my eyes; when I was at these places, I always pictured them with me.
4
It is profound to consider the meaning of ones existence in their ashes. Indeed, the meaning is kept securely and forever in the mind of those that consider the ashes and forever feel the pulse of the life those ashes represent. That indeed is the sacred.
3
My son died last summer from a fentanyl overdose. He was just shy of 19.
A friend helped me make a box of walnut to hold his ashes until after the memorial service. The saddest wood working project I can imagine, but one I pursued with with love and devotion. The box now holds keepsakes my son collected in his travels the year before he died.
About two months after he died, we scattered his ashes in the surf at a place we had visited twice as a family and which represented his love for the shore.
My wife and I debated about whether to hold any of his ashes and put them in small bottles for family. I objected on the grounds that I did not want any of him sitting on a shelf to be disposed of in some uncertain manner at some time in the future by someone who may have never known him. I needed certainty and the peace of mind that brings.
There is a lot in life we cannot control, but this is one small thing we can.
16
I am sorry for your loss. Your son's death was not caused by a lack of good parenting. Keep the faith.
1
Two dear friends died in August. Today maroon colored velvet boxes sit on the lower shelf of the library table. The table top holds a Kwan Yin along with bits and pieces of beauty picked up along the way - not unlike the bits of memories the three of us shared. Right now their ashes greet me in the morning with a reminder to "wake up" - really wake up.
Next year or the year after, when we're ready, I'll take their ashes to the Ventana wilderness. I'll climb the path at the Zen monastery, open the boxes and the wind will take the dust over the mountains. And in some years to come someone will take my ashes and the circle will close.
6
I have spread ashes many times of friends who died during the AIDS Crisis. The wind never takes the ashes in the way you dream...usually the ashes fall out in a clump onto the ground and just sit there. Also, as the ashes fall to the ground some of the ashes get blown back into your face. The process works better where the ashes land in water or the surf.
2
I do a lot of wood working so it seems the best place for a small amount of my ashes to go to are at the base of a large, gnarled oak tree in a park nearby. I love that tree and I love the thought of spending time with it on a permanent basis.
9
When my grandmother died, we scattered her ashes over her beloved garden at her summer home in Connecticut. When I moved into her New York City apartment, I found the ashes of my grandfather on a shelf in a closet, still in the box he arrived in. I didn't know what to do with him, either, so I left him there. Over the years, I had several beloved cats cremated, and began to joke that I had a collection-which my father asked me to add him to when his time came. I did. After 30 years in that apartment, I retired, and downsized, to the country. I gave up the cats, but I couldn't see removing my Grandfather from his beloved NYC, where he had emigrated to as a teenager. I surreptitiously scattered him in the back yard of the building I was now leaving, the building he spent the last 47 years of his life in. Someday, I will figure out how to scatter Dad in the Potomac river by his hometown of Washington, D.C. Until then, he will stay on a shelf in the shed, all that remains of my collection.
11
Years before my husband died, I decided to have him cremated so he could remain with me for my whole life. He has been dead now 12 years, and I have never let his ashes not move with me across the country.
This past summer, my new husband and I decided on a permanent resting place for his first wife and my first husband. After we die, we will be placed in a wall in a cemetery where our families are buried.
Until that time, they will forever remain with us. It feels comforting to me. He was not put into the ground with no visitors in a strange place. Love unites us all.
8
When my first wife passed away from brain cancer we were living back in the woods in Northwest WA. In time I scattered her ashes along the salmon creek that ran through our property. I had planted daffodils along the creek which she loved, It seemed a fitting place to rest.
In time I remarried and we would camp in an aspen grove up on Arizona's Mogollon Rim. Around the campfire we would read to each other from Wind in the Willows and writings from John Muir and Justice William Douglas. The aspen grove was full of elk, deer, turkeys and other critters and those writings seemed appropriate.
One day my wife suggested we hike up to a high ridge, she wanted to show me something. We followed the trail up, the view was beautiful. This was an area our families had spent years exploring. We had carved our names in the trunks of aspen next to those of Basque sheepherders left 100 years before. When we got to the top she said look. There was a piece of marble set into the rock, engraved on it were the words, "Once In Body Now In Spirit Placed Here By Those Who Loved Them Dearly" I asked where did this come from? We put it here years ago. She passed away from cancer in 2013 and her ashes are scatter there.
I was given a small urn with some of her ashes by her children. I now have cancer and when I pass on our our ashes will be mixed and scattered from that high ridge in hopes they will nourish the trees and flowers that grow in that beautiful place. Dust to dust.
15
My parents, who made a life for us by emigrating to the US from China died in 2008. Their ashes were divided among their children. A few years afterwards, I felt it was time to let them go. I went to a beach in New England and bent down to sprinkle their ashes together in the soft waves that came in and out. As I turned to walk back to the car, I saw two small grey rocks, one with a white line through it and the other, a circle. I picked them up and a few steps further, came across a larger flat stone with a squiggle down the middle. It reminded me of the symbol for the Tao and sits on my kitchen windowsill.
10
This was a beautiful piece. I have told my family that I want my ashes to go back to the earth-preferably in a way that would be enriching to the soil. I have composted for many years and actually find the process of once live elements returning to the earth in a way that contributes to growth, very meaningful.
7
Check out green burials. I posted a bit of information about them in a couple of earlier comments.
What difference does it make as long as it's easy on the environment? We'll be forgotten in a few decades as life goes on. Oh, and Earth will be consumed by an expanding sun. Fact is, we'll all be dust in a universe that doesn't care a whit about humanity.
7
Having just spoken with a friend and noted ceramist about making vessels
for my mother's cremains, one for each sibling, I enjoyed the article as well
as the comments read thus far. Reminded me of picking up my father's
cremains twenty years ago and deciding he needed another adventure before
the box was taken home. He loved golf and the beauty of the club course
he'd played for sixty years or so, a place that brought him peace. He also
loved Dairy Queen chocolate dipped cones. So I diverted to the club and
sat with his ashes on the hill looking down the 18th fairway with its
panorama of the rolling hills of eastern Iowa. Then to Dairy Queen. When
I returned I had a moment of trepidation wondering whether this had been
the appropriate thing to do with his ashes. But I needn't have worried.
My mother and siblings smiled, laughed, and affirmed he would have
loved it. As for mine? Scatter them to the winds.
12
My two sons are currently in the Philippines, having gone there to bring the cremains of my beloved husband, and their father, to be interred in the family cemetery. There is a very real sense of satisfaction to know that he is back with his extended family, in the place he loved best.
6
I am only 62 and in excellent health, but my family already knows that I want my ashes sprinkled into the several bodies of water that have been important to me across my life: the Mississippi River, the waters off Cape Cod and a particular beach on Santorini, Lake Superior, etc. My reasoning? We are all mostly water, after all; I want to keep moving (if you knew me, you would be nodding in agreement now because that makes such good sense); and most of the places I have in mind are --ultimately -- connected with one another. In the end, whenever my sons and others who knew me would stand at water's edge, I'd be near. Perhaps they'd take a moment to remember me, and what I stood for ... and say hello.
11
My late father's ashes were buried in the family plot in a traditional church cemetery, next to my parents stone. Sometimes the old ways are still the best.
8
Cemetery plots can be a burden in that one wants to keep them as one's family did -- with tulips in spring, geraniums in summer, hostas in autumn, and pine boughs in winter. The forsythia and japonica must be kept trimmed. There can be no shirking.
We're lucky enough to have a large family cemetery plot on a pretty corner in an outer borough of New York City. But as the last one left, I sometimes find my responsibility a puzzling one: How can so many have died? What if it doesn't rain enough for the geraniums in any given summer? (That is, how often can I stop by to water?) How can I ever move away (as if I would!) and leave the old crew, going on a dozen now, to inadequate "perpetual care"?
Après moi, weeds.
15
I'm contemplating asking for someone to surreptitiously dump my ashes into the printing ink for the New York Times someday, just to reach out and connect with everybody one last time.
78
What a lovely thought and chuckle this morning. Thank you
3
Yes, but then your ashes will reach only those on the Left, and you surely want greater diversity in the afterlife. How about leaving your cremains in a see-through container at the entrance to Disneyland, where at least the kids arrive without preconceived political and moral notions? In this way, even though you are gone, you can truly be born again.
1
Good one!
1
The timing of this article is important to me, because I've been holding onto the ashes of my roommate for over a year and a half, hemming and hawing about sending them to his girlfriend—whom I've never met or spoken to. They currently reside on a shelf alongside the ashes of three beloved pets we had, and inertia—as well as being unable to afford the postage for such a heavy box—is keeping me from acting. (Of course I'm reminded of what the road to hell is paved with.)
I know that this spring is going to need to be the season I contact her, to ask her if I can leave them with a friend of hers to pick up when she comes into the city. I've long felt his ashes should come to rest on her property up in Cold Spring, where he often drove up to camp in her driveway.
6
My wife and I had this conversation about each other's remains. I said I'd like for my dust to spend time in Las Vegas, where I'd really enjoyed myself. I also said I'd do the same with hers.
She asked why; she had no special affection for the place. And I replied "Well, you want me to come visit you, don't you?"
10
I'm with you, Ms. Boylan. Ashes are sacred. The only ashes I have are those of dear, departed animals whom I loved with a passion. The time between their deaths and the arrival of their cremains was always a restless time for me. They were in limbo, I felt. It was only when they were back with me, interred in a box with their picture on the top, that I could relax. They were home.
12
I felt the same way with mine. It was a relief to get them back.
3
I hung on to my various critters' ashes for years. After Cricket (aka Princess Propeller Patootie) died I realized that the happiest she'd ever been was not so much with me, but with friends and their 7 cats and 4 dogs on their 5 acres where she could run free or go wading in the marsh. That's where she is now, along with Willow, Max, Davka, Ketzl, and the others, resting happily under the care of Aunties Lisa-Lindy.
1
Does anyone know the title of the Galway Kinnell poem mentioned toward the end of this piece?
It's a paraphrase of several lines from Kinnell's "Flower of Five Blossoms." You can find it on jstor.org.
1
My grandmother in India told me that the reason for cremation is that the ancients believed that the body is composed of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air, and space. Cremation allowed the physical remains of the departed soul to return immediately to these elements the body is made of, thus allowing the soul to transcend. So that is the reason the ashes are considered sacred. Generally, ashes are immersed in a river so that they go back to earth and the elemental form they came from. The cultural concept of earth to earth and ashes to ashes is the same.
17
I'm on the "nothing special about them" dust team but this piece was lovely.
13
They do not fire up the oven for just one corpse. The ashes are a mixed bag. I told my loved ones that the ashes are not me so they should let the crematorium dispose of the mixed bag.
2
That's not true. Each human body is cremated separately. Sure a tiny bit of dust from a previous body may remain in the retort, but not anything significant. Some pet crematories off a less expensive option of a shared cremation, but human cremations are (as far as I know and have personally seen) always separate.
5
I've often wondered about that. How can we know that the ashes are really those of our beloved and not some random mix? Can someone answer this with some authority?
That is not true. My step-grandfather worked in a funeral home for years.
3
Odd this story should run today as it is the anniversary of my Mother's death. Her ashes are interred in a mausoleum wall niche with my Father's parents. My father will join them when his time comes. I stop to say hello whenever we make it to Oregon. Myself, I have instructed my wife to take my ashes to her home country of Thailand and stick me in her favorite Temple, upcountry, and maybe drop a few on Patpong Road, Soi Nana and Sukumvit Soi 33.
6
After my brother's death my sister in law didn't know what to do with his ashes, so there they sat. Whenever something went amiss she'd moan, "Steve, where are you when I need you?" Her literal-minded granddaughter would reply, "He's in the can in the closet," not understanding the ensuing laughter.
Finally, Judy made a cross country trip and on a whim took Steve with her. She stopped somewhere pretty and thought "Steve would have liked this!" So she trekked back to the car, retrieved the ashes, and sprinkled some in that pretty spot. And did it again. And again, all across the country.
Steve would have liked that.
29
in 1987 i had the dubious honor of sprinkling my aunt's husbands ashes in a salt marsh on cape cod. they were more chunky than i expected and when i tossed them in the water they sank into a pile on the bottom of the creek. they also blew back in the wind and got into my shoes. we also let a balloon go, and it nearly collided with a passing seagull, which we all took as a sign that george was off to wherever he was going. i also consider ashes sacred and kept about a cupful of my father's ashes, sealed in a ginger jar on top of my bureau, next to the little cedar boxes containing the ashes of mcduff the westy, mollie the scotty, and oswald the cat.
8
I plan for my cremated remains to be hurled from the Natchez Trace bridge over the Tennessee River into the waters below so that I can mingle with the fish along the riverbanks where I played as a child. My husband thinks I'm nuts.
17
I still have the cremains of my son on my bookshelf since he died on July 2, 2016, at age 29. Sometimes I place him on my bed before I go to sleep. I always bring him along to church on All Souls Day. I would like to bury him in my ancestral home next to my dad's grave in the village of Ndeakwu Otolo Nnewi, Nigeria. But who would tend his grave as well as his mother? No one!
20
I am Sorry for the loss of your son.
1
Since I've lived most of my adult life on the 405 freeway, I want my ashes scattered on the fast lane.
24
I chose a rose garden at Santa Anita.
1
You Come By Registered Mail
I’ve slept with you for decades,
so I could put you under the bed.
Or in the attic.
An urn to decorate the sideboard?
Perhaps in the lake, I said.
You said, That’s disgusting.
I sleep with a pillow at my back
deeply from midnight to 4 a.m.
By late afternoon I’m home and done
doing things that seem to make me normal.
I did what you said
and threw the paltry dust of you in the dumpster.
That’s not tonight what leaves me hollowed out;
it’s eating alone by candlelight.
26
My father's ashes were spread over several places in several states. Places he liked, so might as well let him be there for a long time.
A few Thurber stories would be a nice way to enjoy being in a box for a few years.
Best on taking care of your love.
7
I miss Viking funerals. Corpse sailing off on the final journey as it and the boat burn to the waterline and return to the sea. No looking back.
7
I learned as I made arrangements for my father's cremation before his death, the USPS is the only legal way to ship human cremains. Fedex and UPS won't handle them. You can't ship them to a PO box #, which was all I had, as they must be signed for and possession taken immediately on delivery. Dad arrived at the reception desk of the hospice where I worked, to the mild surprise of the lady who worked there.
Dad had waged a losing war with armadillos in his later years. A co-worker to whom I related tales of his late night ambushes of these critters had given me, as a sympathy gift when Dad died, a small, cast armadillo wearing a cowboy hat and neckerchief. For some reason it was hollow and had a sparrow-sized hole in the back. I guess it was intended to be a birdhouse. But it was perfect. I asked where she got it and went immediately there and bought 3 more, one for each of us siblings. I put a few spoonsful of the sandy grains into plastic bags and stuffed those in each of the armadillos.
Dad had told us, "Just put me in a coffee can, dig a hole and stick me in it. Wanting something more permanent, I got online and began looking for a ceramic Folger's coffee canister. No luck. No Maxwell's House, no nothing. The closest I came was canister with a spring-clamp lid that said: "Everbody has to believe in something. I believe I'll have a cup of coffee." Dad was atheist: Perfect. In went the rest of him
At the foot of Mom's grave we dug a hole, and there he is.
23
As for myself, also an atheist with the expressed wish to be cremated, my wife says she will, after placing some of me alongside Dad in Mom's family cemetery, have my "dust" surreptitiously interred in her casket along with her chemical-saturated body and buried in the cemetery of the Catholic Church in the small Texas town where her family has lived for going on 150 years. You'll be able to tell her grave easily. No grass will be growing there.
5
eternalreefs.com will make you a part of the effort to save our oceans. Your Ashes can become a permanent part of a reef.
10
My ashes will be compressed into diamonds, one for the each of my sons, that they will hang in a place that allows the sun to shine through. There are lots of companies that do this now. Here's a link to a NPR story about the possibilities: https://www.npr.org/2014/01/19/263128098/swiss-company-compresses-cremat...
2
I, too, want my cremains turned into diamonds. But want those diamonds turned into jewelry that my family can wear (or not) and keep me close by. I'll do the same for my husband (should he go first). Doing so is so much more celebratory than turning cremains into bullets. What do you do with cremained bullets? Use them in a gun? Display them? Jewelry seems much more practical and useable to me.
My dad's ashes sat next to my mother's bed until she went to assisted living. I took them to Rocky Mountain National Park near the Never Summer historic site and spread them near a spot by the Colorado River where he liked to fish. It was a comic scene: if I hadn't been carrying a pocket knife I never could have pried open the box nor opened the plastic bag holding Dad's ashes. It was an ungainly scene, and I'm glad there were no witnesses. Nevertheless, i was left with a feeling of communication with my dad, and a sense of doing something for him that he would have liked, and that my mother appreciated.
11
Similar experience for me with my dad's ashes, but I'm glad we both had satisfaction of the event overall.
1
I poured a small amount of the cremains into a decorative glass. The rest has been spread far and wide.
4
When my mother died in England I decided to bury her 'ashes' (more like kitty litter) in a hole in the beautiful garden that she had loved and created over half a century. I decided on a spot near the ancient stone entrance porch, with the plan to plant a climbing Clematis in the same hole. I waited too long, until the last day before my return to the U.S.and was forced to 'plant' her not on a sunny spring morning as I had envisaged but on a cold, windy, showery day. I remember digging a deep hole and emptying her ashes, mixing with the soil as I did so, only to discover that the hole was far to small. I clumsily dug her our again, muttering apologies and started re-digging, this happened twice more, meanwhile it had begun to rain. I was both crying and laughing, apologizing to her and knowing that she would have been unsurprised at my ineptitude but also have found the whole thing funny. She had always warned me not to stand down wind when disposing of cremains. The hastily planted Clematis died pretty quickly but my mother's laughing spirit lives on. After 25 years I still miss her.
27
What a thought provoking article.
When our only daughter died as a 3 month over 3 decades ago, I kept the container of her ashes in a crate with her baby clothes, photos, and baby book.
My father died 12 years ago, and his were in a box with all the memorabilia
from his WW11 service in the South Pacific. Then last year my mother died, and I put her ashes in a box with her military memorabilia from her Army Nurse days, when she met my father. I felt it was time to let go of all 3 cremains. We gathered sons, grandkids, and cousins, and I chose my parents' part time home in coastal SW Florida. A boat was rented, and we motored out to my mother's favorite barrier islands which are also rookeries for many shorebirds. Here we toasted her with her favorite sparking wine, and let her go with our daughter. When my mother and I discussed where she would like her ashes, her main wish was not to have them mingled with my father's! So we went out to the Gulf and scattered his. An irascible and often difficult person, his ashes, like those of some others in this comment thread, blew back on us. One of my kid's said, "Classic Papa"! And we all laughed through our tears.
11
Potassium, phosphorous, calcium an others as oxides. It means that all the carbon was turned into CO2 and is floating around the world contributing to climate change. People should consider pyrolysis rather than burning. That would leave the carbon as a charcoal that has a 10,000 year life (recalcitrant carbon or what is known as biochar), and makes a good soil amendment. Thus simultaneously contributing to carbon sequestration and improved plant growth.
We don't generally make rational decisions around emotional events. Add that there are industries that depend on our continued cult processes and jobs are the mantra of the good slaves, and it's very difficult to do anything that might help future people and help the planet. The voices in peoples heads prevent it.
6
As it would have it we've just come from discussing funeral arrangements with As it would have it we were just discussing with the the local undertaker (if there is such a thing in NYC) funerals.. Since I'm the older one by nine years we're supposing I'll go first (but who knows). For a while we've been presuming we'll both be cremated--for a number of reasons---convenience, cost etc. Part of the conversation was about what actually happens to my ashes on the day of the funeral e.g. how would they get from the funeral home to the church (I want to have a Mass and, I think, shocked a priest friend by asking him to say the Mass).
I'm still not sure how that happens and I'm sure that will happen. Eventually after all these local arrangements, somehow my ashes will wind up in a lovely
Lithuanian country cemetery in far upstate NY. At least I think so. But who knows, as Wittgenstein said---I won't be present at any of this.
4
Your mention of 'cost' here should be noted as I've not yet seen it brought up (tho my comment reading is not yet complete). But I was shocked to see it was not as economical as I would have expected. Cheaper than a coffin, etc. bu still, not an insignificant amoun. Not a bad idea therfore to make plans accordingly before the process is an immediate concern.
My European mother's ashes were mailed to me, for she did not want to be buried with all the other relatives (30 plus). A close friend's comment was that this transatlantic flight was probably the most enjoyable my mother ever had. When the package arrived, I felt at peace, relieved from some of my pain for not being there in time when she died. Now both, my mother's and my husband's ashes are stored on an upper shelf in my library. Mother wants to be in California and husband wants to be in Maine. At this moment I feel that revisiting good memories with them is a good idea.
7
There are a lot of regulations having to do with where you can scatter human cremains, and they are all absurd - having to do with superstition and fear and totally without logic or merit. Cremains are completely sterile. NOTHING can survive the heat of the furnace, so it makes no sense to bar people from scattering them anywhere they want to. My paternal grandparents were scattered in the front range of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, my father in the Indian River in Florida and my mother in Long Island Sound (after spending 5 years in a box in my guestroom while we waited for an opportunity to reassemble our reduced family for the occasion. She was late for her own funeral due to having been lost in the mail for several months, and my brother was living in California...) I have asked my family to scatter me in the Chesapeake (which is, technically, illegal), but if they don't want to run the risk, any tidal water will do. However, I don't expect to know or - at that point - care what they do with what's left of my earthly body, so I am content to let them do what they need to do for their own peace of mind.
7
Actually, I have thought about this issue and opted for a regular burial. As I explain my choice, "With ashes, somebody has to throw you out." (Unless the ashes are interred, which seems to defeat the purpose). I've seen this too often with the advent of cremation. The ashes are simply kept in a drawer somewhere, by the family member who evinces the most interest in them. Eventually, they wind up with another family member. Eventually they get thrown out somewhere. I don't condemn this choice - but people choosing it should just be clear what is likely to happen. Also, I think about how informative human remains have been about the past. If someone wants to dig up my skeleton for investigative purposes in 500 years, I'm fine with that.
4
Thank you for your thoughtful beautiful piece. Loved ones can also mingle their ashes.
6
When my mother died, eleven years after my father, she still had his ashes in an urn in her living room. Our family mixed their ashes together and took them out to the beach in front of her house. We built the ashes into a sandcastle and had a little memorial party as we let the tide come in and take it all away.
18
Eternal Reefs incorporates ashes into a reef ball then installs the reef ball in various bays off the coast of the US to create new marine habitats. My parents cremains are in an Eternal Reefs location in Biscayne Bay.
3
Scattering your ashes has a major downside, since there is no physical place where your descendants can find you or your loved ones can visit you. What's worse is that there is much less chance that you will be remembered at all, once your immediate family passes away. As a genealogist, it is so important to have cemeteries and headstones which preserve a permanent record. Often its the only way people can be remembered, especially because other records may be sealed for decades if they exist at all. If your ashes are scattered, you will be "lost" to future generations.
4
@Manocan: Dead is dead! Our physical remains are just that"suit" we walked around in. We carry our deceased in our hearts and minds.......there is no reason for a "place' to go and visit them. They are always with us.
You obviously have no interest in family history. My own parents/grandparents may be in my heart, but many other relatives from previous generations are remembered because there is a physical memorial to them. And yes, there is some value in having a place where remains are placed where you can locate and feel close them. Your post is very insensitive to the fact that death is real (dead is dead), but there is also a need for a "real" sense of honouring them in a physical way.
My parents both had ordinary overpriced funerals followed by interment in a generic cemetery. There the remains lie side by side in expensive caskets and concrete vaults. Other than the even rarer times I can find to stop by no one remembers and no one comes. Its not as gentle and sympathetic a story as this was but one also true of America and its cultural denial of age and death. I do miss them so.
10
For my parents' and sister's cremains, I dug holes and planted trees, mixing the cremains with soil for planting. Thus I can look at the trees growing and being nourished with the elements in the cremains. I hope my cremains will be treated the same way.
As W. H. Auden wrote in his poem, 'September 1, 1939',
"May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."
6
My wife and I do not have children and the rest of the distant family will no doubt not give a dame about us...
I am making provisions to have my remains placed in a stainless steel box welded up tight. Then that box is to be welded into the frame of our 1949 Desoto Convertible. As long as this concourse quality restored car, which was my mothers, is on the road, I will be there with it. Odds are one of those distant relatives that could not give a dame about us will be hauling us around and never know it!
7
My Dad's ashes are all over the place. Interned in a beautiful hillside overlooking the snow capped peaks of the Wasatch, and in my dining room, my brother's TV room, my sisters study. Although we treat them like a goof, "oh don't say that, Dad's watching" the little urns keeps his memory fresh and his spirit close at hand.
2
I'm sorry about your loss (revisited) but I'm happy we all have the remains of James Thurber, whose stories I once pulled out and read to several gentlemen of the Jehovah's Witness tribe who had come to my house to convince me of something. I think they were astonished, but I'm still looking for the right word.
A tangible way to use the ashes is to have a lampworking artist integrate a small portion of ashes into handmade marbles, an orb, or paperweight; it's a beautiful gift for family members or a close friend.
3
The only ashes I have are those of our dear dog, Fritz. He was missed by all but especially by the cat, Simon. When I brought Fritz's ashes home, I put them in a round wooden box with a lid. For quite some time I would come into the room and see the lid knocked off, and I thought my daughter responsible. This went on for awhile before I asked her about it, and she said she thought I was the one taking the lid off! The mystery remained unsolved until I caught Simon in the act of knocking the lid off with his paw. He continued to do that for five years, with decreasing frequency (at the end only when he heard the name "Fritz" mentioned) until his own death. They were friends until the end.
20
I have, in my family room, two small lovely antique jars with lids, for a small amount of remains of my mother and sister. They are surrounded by very special objects and art. It is very comforting to me, to have them so close. The rest of their remains were put into a small hole at my grandparents' grave and then the rest given to the wind. And when I'm gone, I want what remains of me to be given to the wind over the Penobscot River and maybe I'll drift to the sea.
4
I have saved the ashes of all of my dogs and cats. When I die, I want those ashes mixed with mine and scattered about a nice pretty meadow. My brother in law dreams of having his ashes sealed in an old truck tire and blasted into orbit. My sister just rolls her eyes, and asks for his alternate plan.
3
......around a struggling sapling in one of the Tudor City gardens. He loved trees, planting trees. I hoped he'd be able to help the sapling, across the street from a place that was dear to his heart, in the city he loved.
2
My dad had his parents (who he lost when he was a young child) disinterred from a mausoleum that was sadly in disrepair and the site of grave robbers. He then had the remains cremated. They spent years in the basement until my dad died. He wanted them placed in his coffin. And so that's where they are this day. My sister and I added recently added a tombstone so people know they are buried there.
3
New bumper sticker: "On the whole, I'd rather be with herons."
6
Most of the atoms I am made of now are not the atoms I was made of just a few years ago. Cells are constantly renewing, dying and renewing. Old cells are excreted. The hydrogen atoms that make up most of the sheer numbers of those atoms are as old as the universe itself and will continue to exist in countless organisms into the future and may someday be fused to helium inside some future star long after our own sun is gone. We are brief flashes, our atoms stream in, recycled from other life and gone to be recycled back into new life. When the last of my atoms are finished with their work as me, I have chosen to be cremated to have those atoms liberated back into the stream of life, the ashes to be used to plant a tree, to soak up the sun and create energy for new life. We are the lucky ones, as Richard Dawkins said, we have won the lottery of life. It's not your death but what you do with your life to create lasting meaning long after your last traces have vanished that matters. I didn't exist for billions of years before I was born, as Mark Twain once quipped, and it didn't inconvenience me in the slightest. I expect the infinite time that will happen after my insignificant existence is snuffed out to go the same way. There will be sadness and their will be grief but even that in time passes, leaving memory and the lingering effects of your having tried to leave the world a better place than you found it.
10
Thank you, Ms. Boylan, for a lovely, introspective piece. Hate to intrude, but I think you could have benefited in your continuing grief by reserving some of Katie's ashes for yourself, taken them to Maine, and privately released them into that beautiful, life-sustaining stream where the herons gloriously gather. That is the comforting memory you would be left with, not the bland, routine efficiency of the local post office.
There still is time, of course, to make a meaningful memorial gift to any one of the numerous good works embraced by her socially conscious U.C.C. I'm certain that Katie's own ministry had a particular area of concentration. Peace to you.
1
The word " remain " means " to stay behind " and that is exactly what happens. The physical body is just a vehicle which makes it possible for the soul or spirit to function on this earth. It is a tool. When a person dies the soul goes on to whatever comes next and the body, no longer needed, returns to the elements as dust or ashes. Whatever is done with those ashes, except for sentimental reasons, is not important.
1
there was a film called foxes that came out in the 70s. good ensemble cast including a young jodie foster. spoiler alert: at the end of the film one of the lead characters, annie, dies. annie wanted to be buried in the ground but not in a coffin because she wanted the roots of a peach tree to grow right through her and for her friends to be able to pick a peach off the the tree and think to themselves “ hey, annie’s tasting pretty good this year.”
1
Only people plan what to do with themselves when they no longer exist.
My mother has an attractive wooden box with my dad's ashes in it, decorated on the sides with poetic sayings and pictures of his favorite cats. I never look at it, and don't go near it, even though she displays it just a few feet from where she sits all day.
My dad was a big man- 6 foot 2 inches, 200 lbs at the peak of his youth and health. Whatever is in that container, half the size of a shoe box, it certainly isn't him.
Mom likes it, though, and that's all that really counts. 100 years from now, no one reading this newspaper will have known any of us.
3
The earliest recorded purposeful human burial took place 100,000 years ago. It probably goes much farther back than that; the earliest evidence of tool-making goes back to 1.6 million years ago.
After my dad's death, my mother and I scattered some of his ashes in places that he loved and visited often. The remainder are on a shelf in my living room, not far from his portrait. When I moved, I couldn't rest until I'd unpacked his portrait and ashes and ran around like a crazy woman yelling, "where's my dad? I can't find my dad!" I'm sure he was howling with laughter in the great beyond. When my mom dies I plan to do the same with her ashes.
A friend took her mother's ashes on a cruise to Alaska, a place her mom had loved, and scattered them off the bow of the ship which had a special ceremony for the occasion. A lovely send-off, I thought.
3
My family started a love affair with a beautiful Adirondack lake in 1954. On vacations from the very first year, through my childhood years and well into my own family years there, he would rise before dawn and paddle alone to a shallow cove on the far side of a near island. When he died in 1997, the family reunited there and formed a canoe circle in that shallow cove. My mother dumped the ashes and we watched them form a perfect circle on the mossy bottom of the crystal clear lake. It seemed miraculous, despite our uniform atheism.
I went there again this summer, alone, in a kayak and felt his presence, although I know it was in me. Thanks for the beautiful piece, Ms. Boylan.
8
Many people may not realize this but ashes can be scattered in most of our National Parks. A permit is required, but there is no charge. After my father-in-law was cremated, my wife and her siblings gathered at one of their father's favorite spots in Yellowstone NP and spread his ashes. Not only did it fulfill one of his wishes but made for a memorable family vacation.
8
You can put ashes anywhere as long as you keep the metal tag that is in the "bag of ashes" that identifies who did the cremation. If found the funeral home could get into trouble. Remember that when spreading ashes. Keep the tag. My mother always told us that she wanted to be in a field of wildflowers by a stream by Glacier NP. She got her wish although way too soon. My husband said he never wanted to be buried so when he died at 40 his family wanted to put him in the ground. I protested because that was NOT what he wanted. I won the argument and my portion of his ashes I put in the river like he asked, his family buried the urn with some of him. Seemed like a waste of money for the urn they had engraved and then put in the ground but ...whatever. I'm a big fan of cremation. Cemeteries seem like a waste of land.
4
Too bad we humans are so vain that we think even after death there should be a physical reminder of our presence. Animals enrich the planet with their demise. If this country were as religious as it often claims to be, we would consider more the old axiom of "ashes to ashes and dust to dust". Let our deeds be our legacy rather than the physical remains of our existence.
11
In the mid-90s, I was driving through Washington and heard on the radio a story about a family scattering ashes in the Cascades. The father fell down a slope, broke his leg, and his son had to hike out to get help. There was no place to bring in a helicopter so he had to be carried out on a stretcher. For a long time afterwards, I decided to be scattered in my driveway. Now I don’t care as long as no one get s hurt.
11
What remains is quite simple: impermanence.
9
How one thinks of death might have some bearing on what one does with the ashes of a loved one.
I've never understood burial of ashes, but can see how having a single place to come to remember that person might be meaningful.
And some, such as myself, have already made arrangements for their ashes to be scattered as I would hate very much being in a pretty urn decorating either a closet or a mantle piece.
8
I still favor cremation for myself in spite of my carbon footprint--no need for the hassle of buying a burial plot in a strange land. My ashes can await disposal, some, perhaps, on the graves of my parents. I imagine my other atoms spinning into the atmosphere, and even, as I once wrote to a Jewish friend who denounced fire for its memories, I might:
"...fall again as dew upon the rose
That my granddaughter's daughter grows."
On the other hand, a recycled body in the earth can have its uses, from worms that are nourished by it, to the ducks that eat the worms, etc as per the Ilkley Moor folk song! Or Shakespeare's:
"Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay
Might stop a hole to keep the winter's wind away."
4
Try googling green burial. The Green Burial Council's website says: "Green, or natural burial is a way of caring for the dead with minimal environmental impact that aids in the conservation of natural resources, reduction of carbon emissions, protection of worker health, and the restoration and/or preservation of habitat. Green burial necessitates the use of non-toxic and biodegradable materials, such as caskets, shrouds, and urns."
From the website of a green burial cemetery in Florida: "Not only does conservation burial help protect land, but the burial area becomes hallowed ground, restored to its natural condition and protected forever with a conservation easement. Native plants beautify the burial sites. Citizens who support conservation are offered a more meaningful burial option with the certainty that protected land is the ultimate legacy to leave for future generations. Families and friends are brought closer to nature in the commemoration of their loved one’s life."
When I was rector of an oceanfront church on Maui, I had occasions to preside at funeral services for surfers. After the church service I would change into my board shorts, grab my surf board, tuck the ashes under my stomach and paddle out beyond the reef with the deceased's surfer friends. The friends would gather around in a circle and I would say the committal prayers and commit the ashes to ke kai - the ocean - as everyone slashed or dove in. We would then catch a wave and surf back in.
The things they don"t teach you in seminary!
29
My grandfather cut my grandmother's braid off when she died in 1931. Placed in a box, it followed my family into the 21st century. My brother's ashes rest on his son's mantle.
I bought a sympathy card for myself because it proclaimed, "God gave us memories so we could have roses in December".
Ashes, braids, photos and any other item that gives us the comfort of the memory of love and connection give us a tiny oasis of peace and joy.
8
When I consider my final resting place, which I try hard not to do, I'm so confused, and I really don't think "rationally". I know that I will have no idea of what happens to me, but my living self is very claustrophobic - the fear of small dark places - and that's the definition of the traditional grave. It hurts me, physically, to think of being lowered down into one and covered with dirt for all time.
I think of cremation as an alternative, but really, don't they put you in a small dark place and then set you on fire? It's not forever, your ashes are eventually removed and placed where you want them, but still...
I would prefer a Viking funeral if I succumb to fire. Open, in a boat, on the water. But I don't think they let you do that anymore, even in Scandinavia.
I understand that there are some cultures that just put your body on the ground, in the open, to be eroded by nature and consumed by it's creatures. Not too comforting for the loved ones, I'd think.
And then I get real and remind myself that this is all moot because I won't know any of it, but something in me wants this last measure of control, the last bit of say over me and mine.
Like Scarlett, I guess, I'll think about that tomorrow, because tomorrow is another day - I hope.
7
I just love your comment. It made me laugh for all the right reasons. I still have my husband and mother-in-law's ashes to deal with, but I keep putting a final decision off for another day. As far as I'm concerned, I think once you're dead, you're spirit (or energy) is long gone and it really doesn't matter what you do with the remains unless you leave a grieving family behind who want to have visitation rights to your ashes.
3
You might want to look natural burial or green burial. There are a growing number of natural cemeteries or natural burial parks around the country. Since you're in Florida, try googling natural cemetery florida to learn more about what they are, how they work, and if there are any in your area.
One of the most welcome benefits of military service in WWII (and other conflicts since, I assume) is the privilege to be buried or have one's ashes stored in a government cemetery with one's spouse.
My parents retired to a sunnier state from their home in a Northern state where snow and ice is common for nearly 5 months of the year. I assured my "always cold" mother I would never allow her to be buried in the cold ground of her birth place where family plots had been purchased. She and my father's ashes rest in matching urns in a comfortable stone structure behind a personalized stone plaque. This is a government benefit my family is very grateful my father earned. We hope future governments will continue to offer this benefit to families and not see it as something to cut from budgets or attach a "user fee" to annually.
5
My cremains will rest next to my husband's in the Maine Veterans Cemetery, a beautiful spot on a hill with benches to view the grounds. Two of my friends also have husbands there and we've joked that on some future Halloween we will all play poker together.
5
When I pass my cremains will be scattered at a wildlife refuge in North Dakota that I have loved for over 40 years ago and where I did much of my PhD research. Four of our dogs are already pointing pheasants and chasing rabbits there, and the final two (one currently sitting on the bookshelf as the snow is too deep for a trek) and I will join them. I have found dozens of bison bones there so I know I will be in good company greeting nesting eagles and migrating waterfowl.
40
Thank you for this. My parents arrived from the postman after the medical students had them for their learning. I wish our med school would have had a service like the one Dadof2 describes. For years, they have sat in their individual cardboard boxes next to each other, and I say, "Hi, Mama; Hi, Daddy" each time I see them. Each died suddenly and I never got to ask what they wanted. But, I think they may prefer a more permanent home - or maybe that is what I think - so will put them in the cemetery next to my brother. I will be sad to see them go and sad they will not continue to be a tangible part of my life. But, all memories will remain. Jennifer, your writing has made me make the decision to do it. It is time. Thank you.
30
I’ve officiated many burials, some shortly after the loved one has died, some many years after. I’ve encouraged people to let go of loved ones’ cremains and make it a time of remembrance and release. I regard human remains as sacred but they do not need to be revered. To me, they are a reminder that for all the particularity of our individual lives, and the sadness a death almost always brings, we are all part of a larger biological cycle that —no matter what we believe or don’t believe—brings new life out of death. So “committing” a person’s remains to the ground or the sea or even outer space is a sign that life goes on. That thought, that hope, may release those who are left to mourn to the new life that awaits them in the days ahead. Life does go on. It must. As I’ve reflected on my own demise, I’ve gone from wanting a casket and marked grave to wanting to my remains to be spread in a memorial garden in the church I now attend. For me, it feels like an affirmation that I belong, from first to last, to a larger web of life, and can rest even now in the sense of purpose and belonging that gives me.
37
Regarding sending ashes up into space:
When the sun turns into a Red Giant, it will engulf the Earth, sweeping the whole surface into space. Eternity is a long time, so I guess I can wait, but the thought of riding for billions of years in a Tesla Roadster is intriguing. The number of miles/kWh will be quite high!
6
Thank you for your beautiful column, Jennifer. I'm not sure I can think of anyone who has died who I would want to see alive again. Most give up the spirit as a result of an exhausting or traumatic event that leaves their body unrecognizable. Oh, if I could resurrect a person, such as the Lord must do, at one of those places in the heart when they were joyous and energetic and larger than life, I am sure I would not hesitate.
It occurs to me that this would be one of those years in my infancy when my mother was a young, smiling beauty such as is intimated in her portraits. I have no memory of my infancy which is just a fantasy of my imagination.
My daughter, who managed my affairs when they expected me to die, and she had to exhaust my meagre assets so the government would continue to supplement my incomes to satisfy the home that was keeping me, made cremation arrangements that included a bench at the cemetery where my ashes would be stored so long as there is earth and sky. The bench already has my name, etc except for the date of death which I have no intention of hastening now that I have escaped the clutches of those who would silence me.
I pray that we all have a loved one who will take the uneasy task at hand and will not let anyone else do the task of final plans as I consider such a heartfelt expression of Love.
23
Very moving. What's the Galway Kinnell poem these lines come from? I would love to read the whole thing. Thanks!
10
Realizing my and my wife's age (86) we have been thinking about the disposition of our remains when time comes. Basically, it has importance only for the close persons we will leave after we pass away. They may (hopefully) visit the place of burial to remember us. However, in our age of mobility who knows where they will be living. Burial at see looks like one possibility. The seas and oceans are connected so after a long period of time, one might imagine that an atom of the remains will be found in any place where the seas reach. Thus, symbolically, the visit to a physical place of burial might be replaced with a visit to a nearest seashore, which may become a place of reflection and remembrance. After all, we all came from primeval waters, not from dust. I wonder what others might think about this.
44
This op ed touches me deeply. Ashes are sacred to me. I'm keeping them with me until my ashes can be mingled with theirs and we can be together again.
20
When I was 19 I took a job in a Knoxville funeral home. It was the culmination of my adolescent pursuit of "interesting" jobs that were different from my friends' gigs as restaurant servers and grocery store clerks. I learned during the first hour of my employment that I was not psychologically tough enough for the work, but I stayed for three months hoping it would get better. I'm almost 42 now, and those three months still affect me deeply. One of the (many) things that stay with me is the wall of cremains we kept on metal shelves in the hearse garage. These were floor to ceiling shelves that ran the entire length of the building. Hundreds of little cubical boxes of cremains were stored there. Many had been there decades, and some for almost a century. I was truly stunned by the number of people who never even bothered coming back for their loved ones' ashes. There were so many of them that I would occasionally find boxes that had been absentmindedly tucked away and forgotten in desk drawers, under beds in our little dorm, or, once, in a TV cabinet. In my spare time I would go through them, just looking at names and dates. I don't know why I did it. It just felt like a moment of quiet contemplation for a person who had been abandoned in a garage was the least I could do. I still think about those boxes all the time. I wonder if they are still there. I assume they are, and that new shelving has been built to accommodate the ever growing collection.
91
There is a moving script somewhere in your story.
When my husband died I divided his ashes and put them in places that had meaniing to him during his life, Hamburg, Hawaii, the Black Forest, Mallorca and under a tree in our garden in Argentina, where he had returned to so he could die in his homeland. It was a wonderful and comforting journey for me.
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What remains after a loved one's passing should be the memories of those who knew them best. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but memories of loved ones are forever.
42
Thank you for writing with sensitivity and some humor about a subject most people do not want to consider. As a family we have deep roots in Maine and have gathered every summer at the farm our great grandfather purchased there after he returned from the Civil War. Now six generations of family treasure this land .We have created a peaceful memory garden with granite pieces and native plants where our ashes will be buried .This way Maine will be our permanent home and our family can remember us in the place we loved the most.
31
Lovely. I will attend the memorial service for a dear friend in about a week. I just learned that she was cremated and reading this hit me again. My father was cremated and his cremains kept on my mother's table for a long time. We finally scattered them atop a hill on a windy day singing the Navajo song of ya te he. I did not know of the green idea and think it terrific. Thanks for this.
30
Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, KY has an area called the Scattering Garden. It is a lovely, wooded area filled with mature oak and maple trees, populated with squirrels and a variety of birds, with two small lakes frequented by ducks, geese, and the occasional swan. As the name implies, a person’s cremains can be scattered in this area. When my husband was ill with Lewy Body Dementia, all of his children, his ex-wife and I went to the scatter garden with him on a sunny summer day and walked with him through the area. Together we picked out a scatter location. He passed away less than 2 years later. Now when I visit this peaceful garden I remember walking there with him, and I know he has become part of the natural world he loved so much.
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Thank you for such a lovely story and within it a suggestion of what others might consider.
31
Beautiful.
14
That brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for sharing this.
2
This all speaks to me of the enduring significance and comfort of ritual and remembrance. How we choose to embrace ritual and remembrance in our current age is much more open to various possibilities, but the need to do so is in our bones.
45
Well, the Hindu custom is always cremation. Only couple of bones are collected by the family and immersed in water, sea or river, without any ceremony. It is optional by religion and also some rites on the 13th day at home when family gets together to remember the departed soul and then return to their normal life.
1
My friend had the ashes of her husband and 2 cat for years. Dealing with them left her immobilized.
When she was moving to Philly, she decided to release the ashes into the river. I suggested the Christopher Street Piers, but she wanted to go on a boat, so 4 of us boarded a Brazilian party boat and tried to look discreet. With one large can, and two tiny ones, an armful of flowers, and some shells.
As we sailed around the bottom of Manhattan, I managed to get the cats out of their containers, and went to a dark spot on the boat and flung Meow and Kitty into the wind and river - they floated away. But we couldn't get Max's can open, no matter how we twisted and pulled.
Off the boat, we examined Max's container. It was sealed with paper tape. I slit it open with a knife - we walked to the Christopher St piers - where a group of drag queens were hanging out at the end of the pier, so we walked part way, leaving them and us privacy. One of them asked what we were doing, and when we told them, they were reverent and comforting, and they left.
Max made a beautiful white stream in the water, and we sent him on his way with the flowers and his favorite shells. It was the right place and time, and as we watched him sink below the surface, I could see lights in the apartment where he used to live.
It was a good night. We put them away nice.
My friend moved away with this part of her history left here where it belongs.
101
When my mother passed, my husband and I drove west to her beloved Colorado. She had requested that her ashes be scattered on Pikes Peak. We drove and picked up my son and his wife in Boulder, then stopped at the airport to pick up my daughter and then on to Pikes Peak .When we arrived we all got out and my son read a beautiful poem about his grandmother, my daughter threw a red rose over the edge of road and I opened the lid of her container and threw her ashes to the 4 winds. Then in a moment the ashes flew back and covered all of us, which caused us all to laugh gleefully that showed us that she never intended to leave us. So like her...how we all loved our last moments with her.
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Speaking of organ donation..... if you haven't seen the Will Smith movie "Seven Pounds," give it a look. It's a great film on this important topic. The last scene will leave you breathless.
1
Before my parents passed away and eventually died (a line from "My Favorite Year"), my father and mother talked about what would be the best use of their remains. My father said that being an organ donor, while good, would only, at most, save a few lives, but that a team of future doctors, training by studying a cadaver, may well in their careers save hundreds or even thousands of lives. They then researched the various medical schools for the one that they felt trained the most caring, humane and respectful physicians, the one that appreciated how hard it is on a family for the remains to be, in plain language, dissected, and, at the end of the process would not simply dispose of them. They settled on the New York Medical College in Valhalla.
2 years after we lost Dad, and then 2 years after we lost Mom, the NYMC held a memorial for all the families of the deceased, run by that class of students. While it sounds grisly to meet the people who dissected your parent, it was just the opposite. Their deep gratitude and conviction that this was a profound gift from our parents was deeply moving. They all felt the deceased was truly a member of their team, as well. Then, when the ashes were returned to us, it seemed less important than the previous 2 years.
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My parents also went to medical school after they died. We are very fond of organ donors in general and one who remains anonymous to us in particular; my brother has had her liver transplanted in him for eighteen years. But neither parent would have been a candidate for organ donation. That is often the reality as we get older.
My brother and I come from a tradition that does not endow the body with much significance after death - "when the spirit has left it" - so had little difficulty with the idea of their bodies being put to a good use before their final disposal. Mother repeatedly said that to do cadaver donation "everyone" would need to be good with it. I think she meant that rather narrowly. Personally, when I die I intend to go to medical school.
29
I have also made arrangements to go to medical school in thanks for all that the medical profession has done for me. I’ve kept the doctors busy for 75 years so far and I intend to make that small contribution.
13
I suggest you read the recent Reuters investigation on body parts businesses (the ones who sell the cadavers to the med schools). It is quite a queasy read, and may change your mind..
A dear friend of mine died last June, in a hospice in Richmond, VA. I our years of friendship, mostly in Richmond, we took many trips to Manhattan to see a Broadway show, take in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, walk Central Park, or just enjoy the City. Her ashes were shipped to me after her cremation, with her last wish being to be scattered in her beloved Manhattan. As I would be in NYC for the Marathon in November, this was a perfect plan. That Saturday, we used a McDonalds cup with a lid, and (discretely) scattered Linda at the places she loved in Manhattan. A small urn of her ashes sits on my desk at home, but most of what remained of my dear friend now resides in the city she loved so much.
51
My father loved boats. I spent many a weekend reluctantly sanding and varnishing teak wood decks as kid. So, when his time came, we rented an old 1920s motorboat to spread his ashes off the coast of Hilton Head, South Carolina. Alas, when we opened the urn to pour them into the sea, a big, big gust of wind blew them all over me, my wife, and the teak decks of the boat. The irony of it all. One last laugh by dad, one more teak deck to clean.
77
What to do with cremains? Remember that they can be divided and placed in many locations. My mother's ashes are in a stream she liked to fish in, a particular golf course sand trap, on her mother's and father's graves where she grew up, in Arlington National Cemetery with my father and brother. . . you get the idea. Each scattering was an emotional event that reduced my grief, and now there are many places that evoke her memory for me and others.
90
i've left my instructions: half of me is to be returned to the family plot in Wisconsin (I promised my Mom I'd come home) and the other half is to be scattered at a beach here that holds special meaning to me in regards to my children and our family when they were small.
Chris, I have done the same with my husband's ashes. He is scattered at his favorite places, and each provided a catharsis for my grief. Loved ones as well have received his ashes to remember and honor him in their own way.
The last church I served (Presbyterian) as pastor had a memorial garden - no urns. All the dust of those dead Presbyterians was mingled with the earth (and, over time, each others) in a lovely, tranquil small garden.
As for me, I have told my brother to scatter me someplace lovely. Even in the most grave-visiting family only a generation or two passes before no one knows or cares where great grandma is buried. Returning to the earth as part of the cycle of life simply makes more sense to me.
148
I know where one of my great-great-grandfathers is buried, in West Baltimore, and sometimes I make pilgrimage there. He emigrated from Europe in the mid 19th century to become part of this country. On other side of family, I visit the grave of the immigrant grandmother who sailed into Baltimore harbor around 1910. As for me, I never did anything that brave or momentous, so no reason for a visitable gravesite after I go.
this op ed is very poignant for me. I have my dear sister's ashes in my living room and talk to her/it , usually in the morning when I awaken. I too question the meaning of these ashes - is she there in spirit or are they just what remains of someone I loved, my best pal, who suffered so much at the end of her life. I will eventually have to part with her ashes and mine will join hers in our plots next to our parents. I can't part with her now, so in the end we will be together, the dust of life.
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