The ashes (not the cricketing kind)

#35

I’ve missed a couple of days. I have good reason for it — we have just taken delivery of my Dad’s ashes, nearly two years after he passed away. Actually I hate the phrase ‘my Dad’s ashes’. I prefer to refer to them as ‘the ashes’ because the man I loved and knew as my Dad left his body the minute he took two deep breaths, told us he was having trouble breathing and his heart spasmed and stopped beating. It was shocking. It was a moment I will never forget.

My Mum and I have been putting off taking delivery of the ashes. He died here in Portugal whilst on holiday so we could hardly scatter them here. We would have to keep them with us until we could make a plan.

I have not written for a couple of days because I did not know how I was going to react to finally receiving the ashes. My Dad would have made some hilariously inappropriate joke about how he would like to have pride of place on a mantlepiece or in an ashtray or in a beer flagon. I feared I would not be able to emulate this behaviour even though we shared the same sense of humour.

However, when the kindly undertaker handed me the urn and I nearly dropped it on my foot it was so heavy I realised that inappropriate jokes is what my Dad would have wanted. My god, what was the thing made of? I wanted to know. Lead? We never said we would like to bury him at sea. The kindly undertaker was obviously used to such a reaction and patiently explained that we had chosen a nice wooden urn which is actually quite solid. We had chosen the urn from a catalogue. It had to be one with a carry case that we could take on a plane as hand luggage — oh the horror. She told us that we are not allowed to open the attractive carry case to see the urn because it has the police seal on it which will allow us to transport the ashes out of the country.

We cannot remember what urn we chose but judging by the shape it looks suspiciously like an ice bucket. One of those tall ice buckets that allows the wine bottle to stand upright in it, surrounded by an iced exterior. I think Dad would have approved of this analogy. I wanted to take him on holiday with us, but Mum has said that the one thing she is sure about is that we are not going to take him onto a plane as hand luggage. We will have to find another route.

No doubt this train of thought will be continued. But for now the urn has been placed on the coffee table near the TV. I still don’t know how it weighs 8kgs but perhaps I need to look a bit more into how this particular phase of our ‘time on earth’ is processed. I couldn’t have done it 18 months ago, perhaps I can do it now.