Ashes, Ashes, Everywhere. I preferred the questions I could…
Tags: Suicide, Grieving Process, Death, Grief

The first days after my son’s suicide were punctuated with question marks. Words uttered in library whispers by well-meaning relatives or friends hinted at the questions that always swirl around suicide. None of them were answerable, except to say that my son was fiercely private about his inner struggles. He didn’t want to burden anyone by sharing his darkness, so he hid it all behind smiles and laughter.

I preferred the questions I could answer: the simpler ones related to the business of death.

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Who is writing the obituary? I am, with input from my family. Where do you want to publish it? Online and in our home newspaper. Burial or cremation? Cremation, please. We have a range of options for the body, from an unadorned box to the fanciest of caskets. What do you prefer? The box suits him; he used to keep his clothes together with duct tape. Do you want remembrance jewelry? Jewelry? Oh, with ashes in them? (I wear my necklace every day.)

What kind of container do you want for the ashes? Where do you want to put them?

The last two questions stumped me.

One of Ben’s professors in college deemed him a “force of nature,” a description so apt that we used it in the obituary. Ben was elemental, connected to the natural world he loved, and he was impossible to contain in life. His spirit seemed too large for any container to hold him in death.

Ben never stayed anywhere for long in life. His grandmother called him her will-o-the-wisp, an elemental force who drifted in and out of her life, dropping by without notice to share an order of crab rangoons or raid her refrigerator for leftovers. A sudden invitation to spend a week at a friend’s slope-side cabin coupled with an impending snowstorm saw him depart a family visit in PA — right after dinner, on Christmas Eve — to drive north; he never could resist the siren’s song of fresh snow. Unannounced, last-minute adventures were his signature. He existed in so many places to me; how could we put him in a single location in death?

Any decision seemed impossible; I needed time to think about it, to talk to my husband and our children.

We settled on scattering tubes, which come in several varieties and different sizes depending on the purpose. Cardboard single-use with outdoor scenes like a sunset or the mountains for Ben’s closest friends. Small, discreet wooden tubes for travel to distant areas. Resealable metal ones in velvet cases for scattering ashes in multiple places.

The containers didn’t hold all the ashes; I received a box with the rest the day of the funeral. There are fewer ashes now, but there are still places he longed to go; I plan to take him.

His ashes contain his every moment, birth to death, reduced to their essence, and they sparkle in the sunlight.

The funeral director’s face paled when I asked him to tell me about the ashes, but he patiently explained that the remains are similar in size and weight to a 5-pound sack of flour. Later, when I looked it up, I learned that the composition and color of remains are influenced by their exposure to minerals, metals, and elements stored in the bones. The amount of body fat can affect the color (more body fat can cause the ashes to be darker in color, for example).

Ashes In My Hand

The first time I held Ben’s remains in my hand was after his funeral, sitting at the Penobscot River in the spot where he meditated. Sunlight warmed my face as I opened the scattering tube. The grief was settling into my soul, weighing on me in inverse proportion to the tiny pile of bone shards and powder — the consistency of sand — I held in my palm.

I dropped them into the river along with my heart and watched them swirl and sink slowly to the rocks. In the clear water, they caught the sunlight, and I remember thinking that Ben was so brilliant that it was entirely logical that his ashes would shine, even underwater.

I realized Ben’s ashes are as unique in death as he was in his life. They are not just his bones. Call it energy, call it spirit, call it love in a different form. His ashes contain his every moment, birth to death, reduced to their essence, and they sparkle in the sunlight.

Scattered Ashes

I resolved to take Ben to the places I associate with his passions and interests, to go on adventures as a way to remember him and try to make peace with his loss. I’ve taken him to a music festival, ridden on a float in a Mardis Gras parade, and gone whitewater rafting down the Penobscot. I’ve gone backpacking and camped out solo. I’ve been on open mountain tops, deep woods, waterfalls, rivers, oceans. Brilliant sunshine, blowing snow, dense fog, drenching rain. Sunrise, sunset, and every hour in between.

Friends and family took ashes to honor our lost adventurer in the one way he would want: they’ve gone on adventures of their own. It’s become a group project as a tribute to him. Ben’s life-long best friend and “brother by choice” chose Mt. Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain and the site of one of their most epic camping adventures. His three high school buddies: tubing down their favorite river and planting sunflowers at the apple orchard they all loved. A close college friend: a favorite trail with an overlook in Connecticut. His Aunt: an Arizona desert canyon. A cousin: cliffs on the Irish coast. One of my dearest friends: The Arctic Circle, after sending me pictures of “beer with Ben” from the trip to get there.

Ben kept many of his relationships separate. Words, thoughts, the manner of scattering, whether they cried, I have no wish to know the details beyond receiving a picture or two. They were part of his story in life; they remain part of his story by honoring him in death. I know they take him to places symbolic of his meaning in their lives, or places he would have visited someday. It’s enough to know they loved my son.

Ashes in My Heart

There have been days it felt effortless to be out on the trails, and days it was so hard and heavy that I wanted to cry. Days the ashes felt weightless and ethereal, and days the metal tube weighed my entire body down as I climbed the trail.

But I find him out there on the trails when I see it through his eyes or let the wonder of the view from the top of the world wash over me. I see him standing on peaks, wading through streams, feeling the spray of waterfalls, or watching ocean waves. He always said he felt most himself when he was outside, drinking in the wonder of the world.

The act of scattering helps us honor and remember our loved ones, and possibly find a moment of peace.

When the timing suits me and I feel him, I sprinkle a tiny handful of his ashes and take a picture of his hat, stolen from him at graduation with a suicide remembrance ribbon pinned to it, made by his auntie for his funeral, and my remembrance necklace: a green malachite pendant for the color of his eyes, and a small, ash-filled, silver bead.

Some images will stay with me. The double rainbow on Garfield at the end of a 2-day trek is etched in my brain. If I close my eyes, I am back in Yellowstone, on my snowshoes in the brilliant sun, listening to wolf-song wash over me. It was a mile away, but it echoed up the valley so loud that I felt it on my skin.

I look up and imagine the sweep of the eagle in the Cascades as it flew, eye-level, across a mountain peak. I see the bighorn ram standing mere feet away, posing and peaceful, on the Continental Divide in Glacier. I feel the peace of watching the sunset from West Bond in the White Mountains of New Hampshire or the majesty of Knife Edge on Mt. Katahdin, the rooftop of Baxter State Park, and Ben’s favorite hike.

I think Ben sends me these moments, and I store them away in my heart. Sometimes I wonder if I got enough of them, they could start to fill the emptiness of loss, or at least begin to make the space less jarring. But they have to be earned. They come at the end of long, arduous treks or after I’ve overcome some obstacle or taken a step forward on this journey and learned a lesson from it.

Ashes In the Sunlight

Life is fragile and messy. We lose the ground, and love is so quickly reduced to ashes. But what I’ve learned this year, scattering my son’s remains from one coast to the other, a tiny handful at a time, is that my connection with him is unbroken.

Whether we scatter their remains a tiny bit at a time or all at once, the act of scattering helps us honor and remember our loved ones. Hopefully, we find a moment of peace and grace in the act of sending their essence into the air, or water, or earth.

When I scatter Ben’s remains, I gain understanding. I catch glimpses of my son, and his life, and our love, in the sparkle of his ashes.