What To Do With a Father's Ashes?

Reverend Danielle Tumminio Hansen is an Episcopal priest and theology professor at Emory University who specializes in "the intersection of trauma and theology." Her father's cremated remains are not, as he asked, spread in Hawaii but in her closet. In this essay, she writes that assisting in the final ceremonies of many others showed her that "ordination and a Ph.D. provide no protection from grief. They just make you vulnerable to it in a different way." Those of us storing cremated remains in corners of our home often believe our loved ones deserve something fitting and final, something more than a Ziploc bag or the cardboard box that contains it. We want to bestow an additional honor; we want to get it right. But that’s as far as we get because action would disrupt the spiritual status quo and that’s a frightening prospect. We might have to acknowledge that their mortality signifies ours, that we don’t know how or when, but one day, we too will return to dust. We might have to recognize that our faith in heaven is a little shakier than we’re letting on. We might have to own that we’re not ready to let that person go because of love or shock or unresolved conflict.

Driving Home the Ashes -- Modern Loss

driving home the ashes



An excerpt from a very moving essay about grief:

i'm finally home at the cloud club after a whole week of death and afterdeath. i drove anthony's ashes in a car through the rain today. it felt comforting, getting his ashes. his clown-brother michael handed me the box and said "anthony, to go!". he's more absurd than his brother. i love him, too. it was nice to go on a drive down a rainy street with a box of someone at my side. slightly less lonely, in a spooky sort of way....one of the things i've been combatting all the sadness with is gratitude. if you've read brene brown's book, you'll understand the psychology behind this, but it is real. gratitude eats fear, it eats shame, it eats sadness, it eats depression, it eats a lot of things.