WHEN WE DON'T BURY OR SPREAD THE ASHES

 The first time I was made aware that some people don't inter or spread the ashes of a loved one right away... it was a friend of the family.  Her name was Dorothy and the ashes belonged to her deceased husband.  I was a lot younger at the time and that confusing image stayed with me for a long time.  The prevailing questions in my mind were ... Why doesn't she bury or spread his ashes?   Why does she hang on to the remains? Is that weird? Am I supposed to be freaked out by that?  Is she holding on to her husband in an unhealthy manner?  So many questions and no courage or rudeness in me to ask her.  

I grew up being familiar with graveyards.  They made sense to me.  Bury your loved ones and go visit them.  That seemed normal.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I was introduced to the concept of cremation as a way to dispose of the remains.  Even then the story dictated that the remains were either buried or spread in some ritualistic fashion.  Hanging on to the ashes didn't make any sense to me... until it happened to me.  

In 2013, my husband and I had the painful experience of putting down our cat after he was diagnosed with a heart condition and wasn't recovering.  Tigger was family.  He was with my husband for ten years and with me for four of those ten years.  We discussed the options and went for cremation.  I don't really remember thinking of the reasons, but cremation seemed to be the best option.  Ashes are easier to deal with physically and emotionally.  It was him, but it wasn't.  

The day we put Tigger down, was the fifth anniversary of my Dad's passing.  I remember remembering and it seemed like just a side thought.  "Oh, it's five years since Dad died."  I think I was emotionally spent at that point, because I had just witnessed my first euthanizing.  I held Tigger as the vet "put him to sleep".  It wouldn't be until I picked up the ashes from the vet hospital a week later, that I released the hold on my emotions.  I held the bag with Tigger's ashes and just bawled.  Someone at the hospital had artfully decorated the bag with a drawing of a cat with wings and a quote that read. " Thinking of your beloved pet will hurt for a while, but the memories of the love you shared will one day replace the tears with a smile."  

Someone went above and beyond to honour Tigger and give us some encouragement in our loss.  I brought the bag home and we didn't discuss what to do with the remains.  So for a while, the bag was stored in my closet.  Then one day, my husband and I found a display cabinet at a garage sale and we took it home and put it in our bedroom.  What do to with that space was a subject of discussion, but eventually it became a place to put special memories and keepsakes.  I thought of our friend's remains that were out of sight, and I brought them out and put them in the middle of the cabinet.  The colourful packaging makes it a little less awkward.  It seems to belong there.  

We still haven't had the discussion about what to do with Tigger's ashes.  What we did was okay for us for now.  If anything, this has increased my compassion for others who don't inter or spread the ashes of their loved ones.  It seems that we all have our own stories and reasons for not doing what seems to be so normal.  I still can't give you a good reason why we hung on to the remains of our cat.  I don't think anyone else can fully verbalize what goes on in the soul of a being when they are faced with death.  We do strange things.  How do we cope best?  We do strange things which is just, I guess,  grieving creatively.  

"Time spent with a cat is never wasted." - Sigmund Freud