My Dad’s Urn

I had asked my mother to make sure to request the little cardboard box, but not unexpectedly the undertaker talked her into a brass urn. It was the American refrigerator version of an urn. Lots of extra room. Much more than was needed for the volume of my father’s ashes. The urn held pride of place at my dad’s funeral mass. It sat atop a pedestal right next to the tripod that held a foam-core-backed image of my dad, a poster-sized enlargement of one of my mom’s favorite photos. The priest was a tyrant who only granted ten minutes to talk about the deceased. Don’t get me started on misplaced power. My 14-year old son gave one of the most eloquent and moving eulogies I’ve ever heard. Using only those few allotted minutes, he perfectly captured who my father was, what he had taught us, and how our hearts felt about his passing. I was already in Pennsylvania when Dad died, but my son had to fly in from Vermont. The airlines agreed to ticket him as an adult so he could make the flight alone. We assured them that he was mature for his age and that my town’s small airport would let him slide through. It all worked perfectly. Richie, my son, wore one of my dad’s trench coats to the funeral. The pain I felt looking at him looking so much like my dad was therapeutic.

Richie was also the one who raised a glass to my dad at the funeral luncheon. It was a delight to talk to so many people who had known and appreciated my dad in various contexts. A close childhood friend touched my heart by showing up. My dad had nicknamed her “Charlie” and I think she had always been a little in love with his jawline. Richie and I headed back to Vermont with more of Dad’s coats. Richie, now thirty, continues to look Italian dapper in my dad’s beautifully tailored, cashmere overcoat. We left the ridiculously large urn with my mother. The plan was to smuggle the ashes into the cemetery where my father’s parents were buried. It was illegal to bury ashes in another grave but we figured we could mix them in when we planted the traditional red geraniums on their graves in the spring.

I flew back to Pennsylvania to visit my mom before spring arrived. She had the urn on a little sconce-like shelf above her bed, right over her head. This seemed a tad creepy, not to mention dangerous, but we each grieve in our own ways. The next time I visited, the urn was tucked far back into what had been my father’s closet, which now held a few containers filled with his belongings, the ones my mother had not yet gone through. Her super dressy clothes filled up the rest of the closet. During this visit my mother told me she didn’t want to spend Christmas at her place or with Richie and I in Vermont because both places would remind her too much of my father and make her feel sad. She told me she wanted the three of us to go on a cruise together. This would not be my first choice but she needed us to do it, so I said yes.

Later when I was back in Vermont, my mother and I talked on the phone to firm up our Christmas cruise plans. She announced that she no longer wanted my dad’s ashes to be planted in his parents’ graves. I suggested that she tip the ashes into a big Ziploc©️ baggie and toss it into her suitcase. That way we could release the ashes over the side of the ship into the ocean. This would be particularly fitting because my dad had been a Merchant Marine when he was young. My mom got really upset and said she didn’t want us to do that. She went on to say that she wanted to send the ashes to me and that I should bury them in my yard. She didn’t want anything else to do with taking care of the ashes. She said she’d mail them to me. I asked her gently how she would feel if Dad ended up getting lost in the mail. She was willing to risk it. I also told her that Richie and I would most likely move out of our current house one day. She was okay with that too. I got it. All she wanted was to be done with the ashes, to have them be my responsibility not hers. Okay then. She mailed the urn to me. It did not get lost. It was heavy. It was also still winter in Vermont and burying the ashes needed to wait until spring. We put the urn in my study. Richie and I both felt as if my dad were in the house. I talked to him even more once the urn was there. Come spring Richie dug a big hole. I bought a variety of flowering shrub my dad had always liked. We tried to open the urn to dump the ashes into the hole but the bottom was rusted shut. We couldn’t get it to budge. We shrugged and tossed the whole urn into the hole. We figured we could dig it back up when I moved one day.

That’s exactly what happened. We dug up the urn. My neighbor, a very handy man, helped me to open the urn. I did the baggie thing. I took my dad’s ashes down to the waterfront and tipped them into the lake. They swirled in the water like fabric on a ballerina as they floated to the lake bottom. I reached down and picked up a white stone near my feet and put it in my pocket. It was the kind my dad had taught me to call “lucky” stones. I walked to the seaman sculpture behind the boathouse and wrote about the experience for my mother. When I returned home that big honking urn was there to greet me.

What do you do with a used urn? I rinsed it out to start. I discovered a colleague at work who wanted it. She planned to use it for some of her deceased parent’s ashes. It’s a long story and not mine to tell, but she needed to separate the ashes because they were headed in two different directions. She took the urn. The ultimate reuse scenario. But then quite some weeks later the urn was returned to my office. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to use a used urn. Totally understandable. What became of the urn? A woman I didn’t know well claimed it when I offered it on the company’s “For Sale” mailing list. I offered it for free. She wanted it so she could combine the ashes from all of her cats who had died. She had been storing them in small individual containers. As mentioned, the urn was big. It did the job. My dad would be tickled to know his urn was filled with cats. He’s the one who taught me to delight in small unexpected joys and entertainments.

And what of the bigness of that urn? Its ostentatious size? It definitely showcased my mother’s need to not appear cheap to those who attended my dad’s memorial service. I’m sure the urn’s presence haunted my mother in some way too. I don’t know if the haunting was about what was lost, what had never been, or something else entirely that I’ll never know. I’m grateful that the urn stayed stubbornly shut until I could do something with my dad’s ashes that he would have really liked. And that space, that extra headroom in the urn above the pile of my dad’s ashes reminds me of how we often take up so much more space in this life than we think we do. I tried to always let my dad know how hugely I loved and appreciated him. He definitely communicated his love to me well. It hurt more when he was gone because we had done that. The space he left felt emptier because of how fully I let him into my life. It was totally worth it.

Cinse Bonino

2022