Ashes to Ashes
These thoughts were prompted by a discussion amongst a group of writer friends about a (admittedly fictional) someone’s ashes being not very heavy and, ultimately, ‘overlooked and discarded.’ I did some research, and re-visited some memories … Was the author of this story right, wrong, or somewhere in-between?
A friend had their reading spoiled recently. An author (who shall remain nameless) wrote about a box of ashes not being very heavy, so it’s put aside where it’s ‘overlooked and discarded.’ There was a bit of a debate amongst our group about this: the basic assumption was that the author was a) wrong and, b) probably had never lost a loved one. This person should have done their research, which, in this day and age – what with the internet and all – isn’t difficult.
While never having written about a box of ashes, out of interest, I did the research that this author should have done. Within a minute, I came up with a comparison: although people ‘tend to expect a lot less’ what they get is about the same as ‘three bags of sugar.’ In other words, 6lb, or 3kg. Under that scenario (other websites varied, but 3kg seemed a reasonable average) a box of ashes, especially when compared with the boxes of books I was lugging around a few months back as I moved house, is not very heavy. I’m sure I also carry more than that back from the local supermarket on a regular basis.
I have only once had to handle a canister of ashes. That was back in the early 2000s, when I was asked to scatter my father-in-law’s ashes as neither his daughter nor his wife felt up to the task. No problem: as they wanted the ashes scattered in the shape of a cross, it was easy enough to wander across the grass distributing the ashes as required.
So far, I am with the author – or am I?
I know nothing about this author and, as far as I know, have read none of his work. But for his research to stick on the strictly factual (3kg = not heavy, therefore …), for me, misses the point. He and I might find 3kg all right to lift, to put on a shelf, even [though this stretches the scenario for me] to discard; but what about the emotional burden that the death of a loved one brings? That goes beyond my experience.
‘Your grandfather is dead. Your mother and I are going to the funeral. You’re going to school and we won’t talk about this again.’
I was eight years old. (My sister is younger than me, and has a similar memory – what we haven’t worked out is whether it was one conversation with ‘the children,’ or each of us was tackled one by one.) However, grandad was never, as far as I can recall, talked about again. Nor do I remember my father ever crying, or showing any emotion, that his father was no more: not in front of the children, perhaps? But I learned very fast that any emotion from me that we would never visit my beloved grandad again, was as unwelcome as coming home with mud on my school blazer. We didn’t talk about grandad. The grandad on whose lap I had been allowed to sit, whose glasses I had been allowed to push back up his nose, and who would listen to my childhood anxieties, was dead: end of story.
As for my ex-father-in-law? Given that he had made it clear he didn’t think I was good enough to marry his only child, we never really got on. His death meant I had one critic removed from my life – but, as his daughter and I are now divorced, maybe he had a point. At the time, however, I had learned to live out my childhood lesson. No emotion. Whatever unwelcome feelings were going on within the other people at this scattering of ashes, I maintained my sangfroid: it was just a few ashes and shall we get on with it? I did what was asked of me, and it was not heavy. (The only emotion I felt was embarrassment at being thanked for what I’d done by two people barely containing their tears – and wondering what to do with the empty canister: I think I just returned it to the crematorium office.)
It is pure supposition on my part, but if the author referred to at the start of this blog had the same stiff-upper-lip training as me, then research would stop at ‘facts.’ It shouldn’t. The idea that someone else might find 3kg as heavy – so heavy as to be barely liftable – is because this 3kg is not the same as a load of books, a bit of shopping, or just a load of ash to be got rid of on a hillside in the northeast of England. There is, too, the weight of memory, of shared lives, of loss. My ex-wife, my ex-mother-in-law if it comes to it, were both capable of lifting 3kg – just not that 3kg; because of what it represented. The irreparable and irredeemable loss of a husband and father that required, even more than a decade later, on his birthday and on the date of his death, revisiting the spot where his ashes had been scattered. This is the ultimate weight which feels like it cannot be borne by the living, and yet, somehow, must be.
For me, it is that emotional weight which would cause me to question how a box of ashes could be ‘overlooked and discarded,’ not its ‘actual’ weight – however accurate the research.