OnceConvinced wrote:
Thrown in the trash? I've joked about that myself, after all I'm not gonna care if my dead body is in the rubbish, but I don't think you could ever tell a loved one to do that to you. Imagine how they'd feel doing it. As others have indicated, funerals, graves, ceremonies and all that jazz are for the benefit of the living not the dead. A way to make them feel better about your death. Seeing your body and paying their last respects means something to the living. It does for me even though I know that all they are now is just a body.
I had my mother cremated. And when you stop and think about it that's really pretty much the same thing as throwing a body in the trash. Of course I certainly didn't think of it that way. But then again, to be perfectly honest about it I was very practical about it. Cremation was far cheaper than a burial. And quite frankly I didn't want to go into debt to have my mother's body buried. Why should I go into thousands of dollars of debt for that?
Anyone who thinks that I didn't love my mother because I simply had her dead body cremated doesn't know anything about me or my mother. We we're very close. I took care of her in her final years right up to the day she died. I would have never put her in a home no matter what. The last three years with her required my full attendance 24/7. I mean, I literally didn't go anywhere save for very brief runs out to the store for supplies. So when she was alive I was dedicated to her as much as a son could possibly be. And when she passed on it left a very deep emptiness within me that was actually physically painful. Even being conscious that these things are caused much from our own choice of how to react to them it was still quite impossible for me not to feel physical pain after she had died. That lasted for quite a while to. Even though I tried to "shake it off". Because I knew that feeling bad over her death isn't doing any good anyway.
In any case, after they cremated her the funeral home called me up to come and pick up the ashes. I didn't even know they were going to give me the ashes. I didn't specifically ask for them. But I went and picked them up anyway. They just handed me a brown box containing the ashes. In fact, I never even opened the box to this very day. It's just covered in brown paper. It still has my address on it. I don't even know if there is a box within the box?
I actually went out and bought a large glass urn with a nice fancy lid. All clear glass. I was going to take the ashes out of the cardboard box and place them in this urn. And this is really going to sound silly, but my thinking was that my mother would like to be in the light instead of in a dark box.
It's silly I know.
Anyway, I told my sister that I was going to do this and she reacted quite negatively to the idea. She didn't like the idea of placing the ashes in a clear urn where people could see them. I think she kind of felt that mom would then be "naked" in front of everyone.
Isn't it amazing how different minds think?
I really didn't want this to become an issue so I just left the ashes in postal box and they are still there today.
The other thing too is that my sister wanted to have a ceremony where we took the ashes out and flung them into the air to set mom's spirit free to the wind. I guess she doesn't mind if mom flies around as naked dust.
I thought that would be ok, but I wanted to do something different. I wanted to take the ashes and spread them around in all my flower gardens so mom can become part of the flowers and she would still be right here with me instead of off flying around naked somewhere in the wind.
But again, my sister didn't like the idea of burying the ashes in my flower gardens. So once again we just let the whole thing go rather than argue about it. And so the ashes are still sitting in the postal box they came in.
I don't seriously believe that my mother's spirit is in those ashes. But I though it could be a psychologically poetic gesture to put the ashes in the flower garden and pretend that mom's spirit comes up every spring and summer to visit.
At least that's a dynamic reoccurring reminder of her. It's been almost 10 years now since she passed away. It doesn't seem that long ago to me, it seems like just last year. Anyway my sister hasn't mentioned the ashes in years and we've never spoken about them since after mom died. Maybe next spring I should just take them out and put them in my flower gardens and just not tell my sister that I did it.
My sister lives a thousand miles from me and hardly ever visits anyway. She would never know. Besides she wasn't even around that last 6 years that I spent with mom when mom was actually alive. I really don't think my sister should have much say about what I do with mom's ashes actually.
