A box
posted in Family, OmegaGranny |Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts for my family and me. Tonight is the last night I will be around a computer for the rest of the week, as we are packing up Mom’s stuff and moving it back to the house tomorrow (this includes the computer), so I wanted to say my generic “thank you” now. When I get back home to Alaska, I will be sending more personal notes.
It’s been very strange. The first few days I was on autopilot, and I don’t remember who I talked to or what I said. But my sister-in-law showed up the evening after Mom died, and OmegaDad showed up the next day, and my brother flew in on Friday, so I’ve been surrounded by family and helped by them–doing things that I found myself simply unable to do.
The box…Well.
In the midst of my daze, I managed to make the arrangements to have Mom’s body picked up and sent for cremation the day after she died. We picked up her ashes on Friday afternoon. Since we are going to scatter her ashes where we had Dad’s scattered, I had them give us her ashes in the most basic, simple cardboard box.
It was amazing how light it was. Back in 2004, when my dad died, and we had him cremated, I was astonished by just how heavy the box of ashes was. But Mom was so tiny, so wasted away–she weighed less than 100 pounds before she went into the hospital, and the box was just…light, compared to Dad’s.
I found myself petting the box, stroking it like I had been stroking her hair when I put it up into a French braid day after day at the hospital. It’s just a plain cardboard box, with “TEMPORARY CONTAINER” stenciled on all four sides, and a certificate of cremation in an envelope taped to the side, a label with her name stuck to the top of the box. But I carried it carefully, hugging it to me, as we took it back to the house.
I told OmegaDad later that evening, “That’s all we have left of her…” I was weeping. He pulled me into his arms, hugged me, put his head against mine, and said, “No, that’s not all you have left of her. You have years of good memories, that’s what’s left of her. Remember that.”
So, yeah. Lots of memories.
The way my grief has manifested itself is in a constant state of disconnection. I find myself wanting to talk to her about things, to tell her about what’s going on, all the time. ”Hey, Ma, you were born in Riverside, right?” ”Mom, did you marry Frank before you went to junior college or after?” ”Mom, how on earth did you manage to keep Grandma from knowing you were living with Dave for seven years?!” (Mom was Bohemian, very artsy, not constrained by dry social mores!)
We visited a blogging friend of hers, stopped by his art gallery downtown. I found myself wanted to call her up afterwards to tell her how R. says business is just horrible, even though the media keeps saying “things are getting better!”
We stopped in another art gallery, and there were pieces there that kept making me say to SIL and OmegaDad, “Mom would have loved that!”
We went to the Western Art Show in the square downtown, and there were all these things I wanted to share with her…the dog in a tie-dyed T-shirt with the pink rhinestone collar…all the people…the excellent bronzes…the splendid paintings of Kachinas.
I find myself caught up suddenly, each time one of these things happened. I wanted to talk to her–but I couldn’t. And I can’t.
Oh, it’ll get better, slowly but surely. But there are questions that we can’t answer now, because she’s gone. There are fun and interesting things I see that I can’t share with her now, because she’s gone.
So that’s where I’m at right now. Again, thanks for all the caring notes and comments. They mean a lot to me.
