I thought it would be great to start this blog with people sharing their scattering stories after a loved one (person or pet) has been cremated.
I’d like to start with an account I heard that is one of my favorite ash scattering stories. It made me feel that what this couple did was comforting and even poetic. The story comes from a woman who I recently met. I told her about my book, “So You’re Cremated … Now What?” and shared the following. Her husband was terminally ill and chose cremation. So they both took part in discussing what he wanted to do with his ashes. His first choice for scattering his ashes was to be buried on the golf course we he had played with his buddies for years. The grounds keeper said no problem and said he could be spread on the first tee so he could watch over his friends. His scattering second choice was that his wife take a bit of his ashes on all the vacation trips she would have after he was gone and pick a nice spot to scatter his ashes. This gave the husband great comfort knowing what and where he would be. It also gave his wife comfort and a connection to him by having a meaningful and personal ritual to scatter his ashes that she could carry out after he went to the Great Beyond.
My beloved Aunt Jane died, a scant two years after her husband died. We chose cremation for the final dispostion for the simple reason that the family is so dispersed all over the country, from Long Island to San Diego, that there is no longer a family plot. But there is one place that in meaningful to us all: their summer house in Green Pond, NJ where we all gathered in the summers. For my cousins and I, it was a paradise. Never a set agenda, scanty parental oversight, and a lake, boats, fish, frogs and everything else to delight the life of a young person.
We gathered there this July to say our final farewell to Aunt Jane. And the cremated remains of my Aunt and Uncle were ceremoniously scattered in boat slip number 12, where Uncle Don parked the boat I learned to water ski behind. It seems pretty appropriate.
When my father in law passed away last October, we knew he wanted to be cremated and at his request, no service. Johns wishes were to have his ashes scattered where he and his wife had visited in the summers the past several years, in PEI on Point Prim at the old wharf. My husbands family, mother,sister,brother and family and our family planned a summer trip to the island…along with Johns ashes, we spent a week together enjoying what John had come to love about PEI, the ocean,red sand,sun and lupines and a time warp feel that makes the island so special. We brought a copy of Jesses book along and we passed it around reading it over the week. It answered some questions we had and offered some humor that was welcome. It helped my mother in law talk about what we were doing and added to the closure in saying goodby to John. The kids painted red rocks and picked black eyed susans, we hauled the kayak to the old wharf were my sister in law boated out with Johns ashes to sea as we lay all the brightly colored rocks and flowers on the wharf. She let the bag go in the breeze(it was a beautiful day)and as she did, all these huge birds took flight from a rock in the water..it was perfect. We did have our sense of humor with us as nothing gos without a hitch…as my siter in law started her paddle out with the bag containing John on the kayak, the bag slid down between her legs….we all roared! Not an appropriate place for him to be! John would have chuckled…I’m sure he did!!
Thank you Jesse for your wonderful and very informative book
My father died 5 years ago tomorrow. Before his death, he could no longer speak and I did not know what he wanted to have done with his remains, or where he wanted to be buried. He motioned for a legal pad sitting on the night table and wrote in a shaky hand…cremated 1/2 battery park 1/2 Isabella.
And so it was.
Within days of his death, I located a strange array of friends and family and we gathered in Battery Park, at the Monument to the Sailor and by the Steps of Remembrance. Most of the people had not seen my father in years, as he had spent the last several years of his life as a hermit of sorts. We gathered in a circle (while police cruised by to see if we were cool). We recited poems and sang a song or two and reminisced. Then we each took a handful of ashes and added them to the flower beds. I stop by there most times in NY and am amazed at the location and the appropriateness of him resting in his favorite corner of New York.
The other half of the ashes went with my brother to Puerto Rico, where in October of that year, my siblings, my mother, my husband, two nieces and a cousin met for my 50th birthday and to make a pilgrimage to Isabella, a town on the north coast of the island, where my father retreated with various women in his life (at different times) Here, he lived his pirate spirit, drank rum and told tales.
We sojourned down the beach and found the right place, in a low reef, to spread his ashes. My husband (who is a drummer), who did not get along with my father, but who wanted to pay his respects out of respect for my family, brought a huge plastic container from a water cooler, and played rhumba rhythms to accompany the sound of the waves and the soft weeping.
I think my dad would have to be pleased.
Now if I could only figure out to do with my own remains. I’m way too attached to my bones to get cremated. Maybe I need your book.
Thank you for the great quality of your blog, every time I come here, I’m amazed.