I went to a scattering of ashes last Sunday. Our friend Catherine had died on March 18, 2026 and her ashes were scattered or rather poured out of an urn at the base of the tree she had selected. The ceremony could have been sooner but some of the seven people present had been unable to be there until Sunday. Even so, it was an expeditious scattering of ashes compared with my parent's ashes.
My father died on December 17, 2009 and my mother on March 24, 2012. At least half their ashes and maybe more are at my sister Mary-Jo's house. My sister says, "They always liked being here". My father said he wanted his ashes left on a sandbar just off the point of land near his home in Hull, MA. He planned for the rising tide to wash his ashes out to sea.
That would have been a simple job. The difficulty as with Catherine's ashes was getting the family together. A year later we had a family get-together at my brother's place in Maine. My sister brought my father's urn along and we scattered some ashes off the stern of my brother's boat. It was a very dark night and I felt a stinging in my eyes as the ashes were scattered to the wind. Was this my father protesting a deviation from his request? Not to worry. The urn was still almost full.
My mother eventually died and was cremated. She had no requests about the disposition of her ashes so my sister combined her ashes with my father's. The Catholic Church is barely comfortable with cremation. Your ashes are supposed to be buried in a consecrated cemetery. This scattering and mixing of ashes is a real no-no in the Church's eyes. But my parents did not seem worried about the details when they were alive other than my father's request to be left on the sandbar.
As I say, my mother died in March, 2012. On August 10, 2013 at low tide, a bunch of us headed for the sandbar chosen by my father with a container of Joe and Mary's ashes. Nephew Paddy brought his flute and played an Irish lament. We returned to high ground to let the tide do its work. There was a bouncy house in my brother's yard from a recent birthday and we all had a good jump. Our parents were fun people.
I thought we were done with ashes until my sister told me recently that she'd found a good spot for the rest of the ashes. The cemetery in Hull has a wall with niches for the placement of ashes. After expressing surprise that there were still ashes on hand, I looked up the cemetery. These walls with niches are called columbariums, from the Latin for a structure where doves are kept. The view in one direction is over the bar where some of the ashes had been carried off by the tide. The view in the other direction is of the Atlantic Ocean. My father would like that. My mother would be happy to be on dry land. But they're not there at all, are they? According to their beliefs, they've moved on to bigger things.
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| The Crossing of the Bar |
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