My siblings and I each have some of my mother’s ashes to both hold and scatter. The journey of letting go and holding on is a delicate one. Grief for all of us is both a releasing, yet also finding ways to hold loved ones in our hearts. I have scattered some of her ashes in our garden, some are where she lived on the East Coast, and soon she will be in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Cod. I knew she would love being in our garden. It is the extended visit she longed for. Her East Coast home is a warm, safe place for her as it always was for all of us when we could breathe the air together as a family. Our trip to Massachusetts and the Atlantic Ocean takes some planning as I read up on the rules and recommendations for airplane travel with ashes and the off shore scattering of her remains.
Airlines may have different stipulations but in general as long as you have documentation, which includes a death certificate, ashes may be transported in either a carry-on or checked bag during domestic travel. They likely will separate out the urn for testing, or in my case it will be a heavy-duty Zip Lock bag. When I “zipped” the bag if felt like I was keeping her safe, adding love to the clicking sound when I sealed it tight. TSA will examine the ashes to make sure they are not laced with anything. Somehow if they knew my mother, they would be assured there would be no illegal drug anywhere in her vicinity, dead or alive. Ashes can be scattered in the ocean as long as it is 3 miles off shore. In truth we may not follow the directives perfectly. Boating was never big in our family. Except for our journey when I was a child across the Atlantic to France on the Queen Mary — another one of my mother’s ideas to find adventure. But beyond that, we frolicked in waters closer to shore. Scattering of ashes on the beach at sunset may be my way to stretch the boundaries as my mother always did in her way.
Yet as I get lost in the planning, the process of grief is not lost on me, which we all experience with the death of a loved one. Without a traditional funeral or memorial given the pandemic, this year-long journey with ashes has allowed me a deeply personal reckoning with her passing. Healing from loss is a very individual experience, each of us finding our own path. At the same time finding some way to join with others as our family did, helped to both soothe our sadness and celebrate the beauty of a life lived. Thankfully we can all begin to find that beyond Zoom as the inevitability of death continues.
The subject of death can often feel like a four-letter word in our society. Yet perhaps it is the combination of personal loss, my age, and the painful grip of the pandemic that makes it hard to turn away from or should we? I remember reading about something called “Death Cafes” a number of years ago. These cafes are non-profit groups that encourage individuals to meet for tea and cake, sweetening their discussion of death, bringing it out of the closet and into our living rooms. In the past 10 years more than 6,000 “Death Cafes” have been organized. They were first started in London in 2011 by Jon Underwood as an offshoot of Bernard Crettaz’s “Café Mortels.” As I share this, I am moved by the fact that without realizing it, I have been part of such a group for the last three years where we read and share wonderful discussions about death and dying and growing older.
Learning about these cafes a number of years ago from a distance matched my distance from the inevitable truth that none of us gets out alive. But there is nothing that brings that truth closer to home than having the honor to carry the weight and responsibility of scattering a parent’s ashes. I have learned that ashes are heavy; they do not blow in the wind or wash away with light rain but they do eventually disappear. Death is heavy to hold; yet it reminds us of our impermanence. And in that way we can have gratitude for a lighter and more joyous life.
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August 01, 2021 at 02:19AM
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Opinion: Priscilla Dann-Courtney: Ashes are heavy to hold, but they do disappear - Boulder Daily Camera
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