A Box of Ashes

The first time I held human ashes, I remember being surprised at how much they weighed on my 12 year old lap as I sat on a dusty red church pew cushion. In movies when you see someone with an urn, they’re holding it and tossing it to and fro as if it were the weight of a volleyball. Such is not the case. Surely, much of the weight of these remains on my pre-adolescent lap that Thursday afternoon in May of 1993, was the thick, polished, simple wooden box in which the ashes were contained. Nonetheless, the whole of a human body engulfed in flame until it is disintegrated into a soft light-grey powder with bits of bone in it, smelling of rotten eggs, is heavier than portrayed in movies. Just so you know. In case you yourself haven’t held a freshly filled urn.

I remember being surprised at how many people were there. It was not a small church, and it was full, even with some people standing in the back and in the lobby outside of the sanctuary looking through the glass with the words of the pastor and the songs sung coming through speakers in the overflow lobby. I had grown up in this church. I hadn’t gone every Sunday, I hadn’t been baptized, and even through childhood years I felt an aversion to the whole business. I liked the stories well enough, but not with an attachment or understanding of the dogma of it all. I liked the stories in the same way that I liked watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons before catching the bus to school. We cannot resist a good, colorful story. In a way, I found just as much, if not more, spiritual moral and insight in the Ninja Turtle character archetypes–along with their master and adversary–as I found in the stories of Jonah in the whale or Jesus manifesting fish out of thin air. I went to church when I did because of the stories and the creative ways they were fed to our spongy, curious minds, and because I knew that my going made my grandma happy and I loved her and wanted her to be happy. By the time I was sitting in the pews that Thursday, with my oldest brother’s ashes on my lap, I had been going to church less and less. The loss of innocence was a boulder of magnanimous proportions which had already begun rolling down a hill of which no bottom could be seen–crushing flowers and squishing butterflies along the way. [see also: adolescence]. After Titus’ death, my interest in church seemed to just be no more. Not consciously in any way because of his murder. The events–his death, my loss of innocence, my vanished religious interest–simply happened to coincide quite neatly. No connection whatsoever.

I would continue to be involved with congregations and youth groups, church camps, bible studies, through the first half of my teen years–in the summer, when I spent the school-less months with my grandparents in Phoenix. I even had a vision of Christ one night in my summer bedroom and was so affected by the power of it that the next morning I stood in the hallway with my grandmother between my bedroom and the kitchen, tears in my eyes, and said in a soft shaky voice “I believe.” The carpet in the hallway was caramel colored and packed down and darkened by feet through the middle. On the dimly lit hallway walls were jumbles of family photographs from yellowed black and whites of farmers I’d never known, to the very last photograph taken of my mother and two brothers and I, taken one month before Titus would be a pile of ashes in a bag in a box on my lap. I was baptized shortly after that morning in the hallway. It was the thing to do. People were always getting baptized and everyone would shower them with attention. I loved being the object of attention and I wanted to be a part of their special club. My Grandfather baptized me, on July 5th, after the May in the crowded church with the brother-in-a-box. Nearly 20 years later, Grandma still marks my spiritual birthday on her calendar and prays extra hard on that day for my guaranteed salvation.

My grandparents had been in town that May from Phoenix, visiting all the family in Kansas as they did every year. They stayed with us in our mobile home, which was a filthy disaster, though we must have cleaned up a bit before their arrival. Maybe we emptied the litter box–which had more poop than litter in it–or cleaned the kitchen, or at least washed the two weeks worth of dishes that were strewn about the counter smelling of molded scraps of food. Our house looked like something you would see in a domestic call on an episode of COPS–which we watched often. I can’t imagine why the grandparents were staying at our white trash palace when surely there were other relatives in town with larger and more hygienic houses.

Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping in Timmy’s bedroom. 14 year old Timmy was at a friend’s house.

I was sleeping in Mom’s bed because she was in the hospital having just had a hysterectomy.

Titus was not home as he most often was not, and especially now that the grandparents were around and they emphatically did not approve of his 17 year old lifestyle of drugs and rock and roll and promiscuity. He had just turned 17 and he was a handsome fellow; the handsomest of the three of us, I would readily admit. One classmate of his said that he looked like a young Elvis, and although I have still not exceeded 5’7″, Titus at 17 years old was near 6′ tall. He was well-built, charming, humorous, erratic, bi-polar, charismatic, and compassionate. Friends would later say that he was one of those friends who was always there for you. He would listen deeply, and comfort a friend in need with all of his heart. He had fathered a child who had been born a year earlier and whose mother he had not kept contact with.

There was a hard knock on the door in the middle of the night. The middle of the early morning. Joey barked ferociously. Joey was Titus’ dog, and lovingly vicious guardian of house and family. A german shepherd mix. She was smaller with a bit more weight than a full-blooded german shepherd, with a wheat golden coat with fuzzy pointed ears and a blackened snout. She would live to be an old, old woman. One day in my mid-twenties, when she lived with Timmy out in the Kansas country, he called to tell me that she’d disappeared under curious circumstances in which the neighbors were playing with shotguns. He never found her. The neighbors said they saw her run off. Sometimes I imagine her shedding her canine disguise, slipping out of it like a slip, like a waft of smoke, shape shifting into her true form–whatever it is, it is mysterious and enchanting–and wandering the Earth protecting people everywhere.

I didn’t get out of bed to answer the door. I had a feeling. I lied in the dark staring at the thin wood-panel mobile home wall. I almost cried and didn’t know why. when I heard grandma answering the door, I tip-toed down the hall to peak around the corner. I heard a low-toned voice speaking with authoritative compassion–an attempt at benignity with a subtle undertones of apology. Over Grandma’s night-gowned shoulder I saw the two stalwart figures in blue pants, blue shirts, blue caps held in their hands to their chests. As Grandma closed the door and Joey continued to bark, I turned and returned swiftly to Mom’s bed and curled up by the wall. I felt a great ominous storm of tears building. I felt through the silence of that building. I knew that I knew something without knowing. I hadn’t heard any of the words spoken at the door, only the sounds of his voice. It was like getting punched in the face and for a few moments you don’t feel any pain, only stunned shock that you have just been punched in the face. The pain came later.

After a few minutes I got out of bed and floated heavy in a slow daze to the end of the hall. I stood in the doorway to Timmy’s room. The door was open and the light was on. I stared into the room. My groggy grandparents were getting dressed at 3-something in the morning. My gaze had no direction, no anchor, my face felt blank. Grandma saw me, looked at Grandpa and said, “Oh, Dale, he heard…” She came to the doorway to embrace me. I still hadn’t cried. I don’t remember the first time I cried about it, but once I opened that tributary, the salty waters would flow for years to come.

We were at the hospital where Mom was recovering from surgery. Timmy had been called and had arrived with Shane and Mike. Some nurses seemed flustered by our early morning presence–visiting hours clearly not beginning at 4am. Someone talked to someone and suddenly an air of deep apology and acceptance permeated. It was a palpable compassion. The sick and dying and healing bodies were mostly sleeping, mostly still. The hallways were dimmed, sterile and quiet but for the beeps, clicks and hums of various polished machinery. Sometimes the squeaky white shoes of a nurse would crescendo and decrescendo.

We stood in the dark room, my giant mother dreaming perhaps of unicorns or the electricity bill. I remember not standing close to her bed, but lingering under the mounted sleeping television. Grandma stood nearest to Mother and I reckon Grandpa was close, too, but I don’t recall. He is a quiet figure on the outskirts of my memories. Prominent memories of him are usually accompanied by the smell of saw dust in his basement wood shop, or the smell of pipe tobacco, or the funny monkey face he made by sticking his dentures halfway out his mouth and pressing his ears out with his fingers.

Timmy was also near the bed, by the window. Grandma had whispered Mom awake, but could not find inside her whatever it would have taken to say whatever could be said. Mom questioned the silence in the room with “What?” A pregnant silence. A silence held to and extended because once broken, there would be a cascade of breaking to follow that would seem to never stop.

“WHAT…?”

Timmy blurted out, “Titus is Dead.”

I remember being in the hallway. The shiny-floored, previously quiet, still dimmed hallway, now filling up. The silence had been broken. Everything broken. The hallway filled with shatteredness, brokenness, and terror. The walls, fluorescent lights and sanitized floor shaking. The sounds of a human voice filled the network of hallways. One human voice. One Mother’s voice rattling every corner of heaven with foresakenness. Never before in my life, nor since have I, nor do I speculate I will ever, nor hope to hear such a mountainous wailing exploding forth from a human mouth. It was a chorus joined by every Mother in the history of Earth and Universe who has ever lost a child. It was a sorrow that rocked every vessel floating on the sea of existence.

It had been 2:23 in the morning hours earlier. Titus was out laughing with friends, enjoying music, smoking cigarettes. He was driving a weathered silver Nissan Sentra. His friend, Dusty, was in the passenger seat. Titus had on dark blue shorts cut from sweat pants and no t-shirt, no shoes. His window was down and he enjoyed the breeze. On his young, tanned skin, a dragon tattoo began on the back of his right shoulder and reached around to his chest. The tattoo was his 16th birthday present from Mom. He was born the year of the dragon. They were crossing the intersection of Lincoln and McClean in Wichita, Kansas. I wonder what was playing on the radio. I wonder if they were in a moment of silence or in the middle of a conversation. Who was the last to speak before it happened and what had been the last thing said? I wonder if either of them had a cigarette in hand when the other car came into the intersection. Were either of them smiling before it happened?

Brent D. Rodgers was driving a boat car–one of those 80’s American models that are endearingly referred to as boats. Perhaps it was a Buick. Maybe a Cutless Surpreme. It was a dirty golden color. Brent had short dark gelled hair, a trimmed beard, a small gold chain around his neck. A beer belly. Maybe he was a football player in high school. He had previous DUI’s–plural. That morning, at just the right time for a fateful meeting that he was not aware of, he left The Shady Lady bar at last-call and was heading home–blood-alcohol content: 0.25.

There were no witnesses. No conclusive evidence could prove who ran the red light. This was before these Big Brother days of surveillance cameras at every intersection. The front end of Brent’s car met the driver’s side door of the Nissan Sentra at a direct perpendicular. Logistics calculated that Brent must have been traveling somewhere in the vicinity of 90 miles per hour, and Titus at 35 miles per hour. I wonder of the people who had early morning jobs who were late to work that day due to slowed and detoured traffic. Perhaps a baker, a barista or two, drove by slowly rubber necking to catch a glimpse of the Buick with a dented bumper, the Nissan demolished into a crushed metal crescent. Maybe someone saw an occupied body bag and wondered, and felt simultaneously sorrow for the wounded and dead, as well as gratitude for their own children safely sleeping at home in their race car beds. Soon the sun would rise and by the time most people were on their way to work, driving through the intersection, the mess would be cleared and no one would know anything at all had happened. It was just another day.

Days later at a mortuary on Broadway street for a final viewing of the body before cremation, the room was an elegant space for memorial gatherings. Rows of cushioned chairs, a lacquered wood pulpit and deep maroon velvet curtains bunched up and tied with tasseled golden rope. The lighting was delicate and the carpet was dark warm hues with paisley patterns. In contrast to this elegance, the inanimate young body was layed on a wheeled stainless steel table, silver as a brand new knife, between the front row of chairs and the pulpit. A sheet without a single wrinkle and as white as an igloo draped the body up to the shoulders. I timidly touched the tissue of his shoulder and quickly retracted my hand. It was like chilled, hardened, unfired clay. The lips were a concrete grey with an almost imperceptible tint of blue. I touched the hair being careful not to let my hand touch the skin again. The hair was like that of a doll–lifeless and false.

Mom, rarely one to mind proper etiquette, yanked the white sheet down off the chest. There was a sewn Y-shaped incision from the autopsy along the length of the torso and diagonally across the pectorals. The right branch of the Y sliced through the head of the dragon tattoo. The dragon had been slain. A large number of his bones had been pulverized. Many of his organs were nearly liquefied. His skull was separated from the spine. Nothing was salvageable for donation. Eyes, kidneys, nothing. He was killed instantly. I imagine his confused soul jolted from it’s fleshy vehicle, hovering at the intersection at 2:24 thinking “What the fuck just happened?!” Dusty, having been sitting on the not-entirely-crushed side of the car, held on for four hours and was transferred to the hospital before becoming body minus soul.

Later that week, around a conference table in the mortuary office discussing arrangements, Mom said “Well, we can put his ashes in a tall ashtray by the front door, everyone can flick their ashes in it and every now and then we can say ‘gee, Titus, you’re gaining weight!’ The morticians did not laugh. They didn’t quite know exactly what to say in that moment, and nervously redirected the conversation. At some point it was decided to store the ashes in a simple, modestly priced wooden box urn.

Mom wanted John Lennon’s “Imagine” to be sung at the memorial, as it was one of Titus’s favorite songs, but the pastor of the church, because of the line “imagine there’s no heaven,” denied this wish. Someone sang “Cat’s in the Cradle” which was ridiculously inapplicable since we were not raised with any such father/son bond as the song muses about. Other songs were sung. A few people said the standard kinds of things one says at such an occasion.

I sat in the middle of the sea of mostly strangers. Alone. I knocked on the box on my lap. I tapped it. I leaned over and put my ear to it. I didn’t hear the ocean. I lifted it up and shook it a couple times and it’s weight forced it back to my lap. I turned it upside down and fingered at the black phillips heads that held the base on. In the parking lot I walked holding it on my head like a jug of water or basket of fruit. At home in Titus’s room with the door closed, I unscrewed the base and lifted it off. I untwisted the plastic bag and inched my head towards the opening to smell the rank ashes. I glided my hand into the bag of ashes and they were as soft as a one-day old kitten. There were bits of bone that didn’t burn up completely, the size of really small cockroaches. When I pulled my hand out it was dusted the color of a sidewalk. Titus’s beat-up combat boots were two sizes too big but I wore them anyway. I started smoking cigarettes and wore black to school for two years straight. The grunge rock movement was beginning and it was perfect. The crunching guitars felt like what my heart felt like. I got poor grades and started smoking pot.

The wood box migrated over the years. It spent time in each person’s bedroom, and on the book shelf in the living room as we watched re-runs of M*A*S*H and ate mac and cheese with cut up weenies.

When Timmy and I grew up and mom hit the road with a truck driver she met at McDonald’s and married, the box stayed with Tim because I was always moving about from here to there avoiding the inevitability of adulthood. For 3 years when I lived with Tim, I took the box off the stereo speaker in the living room and put it on the dresser in my bedroom. I was a compulsive thrift-store shopper and had a collection of different hats that sat stacked on top of the box. I put my spare change and lighter in front of the box. A mostly empty PBR can with cigarette butts in it was usually nearby.