Skip to main content

Dust to dust day

(I'm walking with my glasses on, writing. Don't look up cos the world is not clear. Head down, emotions contained...)

 
End point (c) Anna Sublet

All that remains is packaged in a box, tied with a ribbon and adorned with a fresh apricot rose. 

That's beautifully presented, says mum as we navigate the box sideways into a funeral home bag. 

It's heavier than we expected it to be. Like a brick. The funeral director guy tells us it's like a 2 kg pack of sugar. In a suction package that you need to break open. That's if we want to divide him up...

I have visions of him exploding like flour, flying over clothes and disappearing into parts of the room where the substance will lie, unaware, insentient, ever-present but diminishing from view, slowly.

When they burn the body, most of it vapourises, I'm told. Back into oxygen the body goes. There must be a chemical reaction I could reduce this to? Something plus something equals something. X2 + y=wv (water vapour) plus what's ash? Carbon? X2 + y=H20 +C. Does that help explain it?

Anyway these are the things you can lose yourself in, reduction to elements being the process here. Reclaiming of remnants the reality now. 

Ashes to ashes. The box lies sideways on his office floor. The carpet is dusty and the apricot rose is dead dry.




Labels:

Comments

  1. Sandra Kelly9 June 2016 at 10:45

    Oh, this pulled at my heart so. Much love Xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anna Sublet 9 June 2016 at 11:14

      Thank you Sandra, really appreciate your comment. Grief can be such a blur. x

      Delete
  2. Unknown9 June 2016 at 20:44

    I was also surprised at how heavy the box was with my Mum's ashes. My sister kept referring to her as if she was actually in the room. Mum's now in a wall, her final resting place - which I can't really get my head around.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anna Sublet 15 June 2016 at 09:59

      We have just left Dad on the floor of his study. I think I'd rather scatter ashes than lock them away in the earth or a wall, but I guess it's comforting to have some sort of 'shrine' or marker to visit.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A morning too early, a morning too late

Sensing  the  future It was our last morning in New York City. It was a morning too early to be leaving, and as it turned out, a morning too late. Dad was on his final lap of life, and we were making a dash home to cheer him along as he hit the home straight .  I went down to breakfast with a heavy heart. The bar was buzzing. Halloween scenes were already playing out in the streets. A kind waiter asked me 'have you got your costume sorted for tonight?' To which I stumbled, 'no...I I I have to go home. My dad's sick...' and began to cry. The dear boy was shocked, 'Oh, I'm so sooorreeee. Do you wanna hug?' I could barely breathe. NO, I managed. I ate cereal alone, and had grapefruit juice. Dad loved grapefruit. I packed the last of my things, and stumbled out through the lobby, past glamorous girls in fabulous costumes. Mark had already run off to explore the neighbourhood after checking out of the hotel early. It didn't seem...
5 comments
Read more

Coming of Age

The bricks were always cold underneath my bum. Cold and hard. I could feel their sharp edges. In the nights we sat and talked, my brother and I and the neighbourhood boys. The smells of sour smoke and saliva on one, body odour on another, and menace on the other. The fluorescent globes hummed from the train station platform across the road, and the street lights pooled at the corner. Inside was out of bounds to these boys, so we met on our side stairs. The frosted glass door between us and our home. These were the kids we didn’t trust, the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Where were their parents? Absent fathers, unsighted mothers, these boys roamed the streets and set me on edge. The attraction to the dirt, to the smell of one’s mouth...I can still feel it now. It was an urge, but not an infatuation.  The hearts of these boys remained hidden. It was as if they walked in costumes, played their parts, and kept their distance. One day, my mum greeted me at...
4 comments
Read more

Shadow of the Oaks

As soon as I saw it, I wished I hadn't. There was something deadly ominous about the darkened room. Bare wood floors, panelled wood walls, slices of weak light coming in through the long, autumnal windows. Funereal. I could hardly process it.  A sign. The room was empty, the service cancelled, the food and drink all dried up. Finished.  It was our last day in New York, and we had returned to the Oak Room at The Plaza to toast Dad with a negroni. At this stage, when we knew he was fading, e ach negroni seemed like a communion .  The Plaza was one of the places him and mum had honeymooned. The last time we'd been in NYC, with kids in tow, we had blown a couple of hundred dollars on fancy burgers and lemonades for the kids, and champagne and wine with dinner for us. Spending mum and dad's trip gift money.  That was nearly 5 years earlier. We had taken our girl to look for Eloise , the little literary inhabitant of the Plaza...
4 comments
Read more