Ashes aren’t actually ash

There are many things you learn as part of this grieving process... laughing at ridiculously morbid things has been one of them.

In the last couple of weeks I have laughed at how insanely hard remote schooling 4 kids while trying to work actually is. I have also cried and yelled and drunk wine about that, too.

I have laughed at falling apart at not coping with things people have said and done. I have also cried and gotten angry and drunk wine about that...

But by far the most unwelcome learning has come from learning that ashes aren’t actually ... ash.

It is not like the movies - a grey powder - or what is left after a campfire, or what you empty out of the wood fire in your lounge room.

I mean, they are part ash like that. But they are also a mixture of gritty bits and, frankly, larger chunks of who knows what part of Pete than I ever imagined.

There is a picture of what occurred today but I understand not everyone reading this will be ok seeing it right in the middle here, so I’ll put it at the bottom.

I discovered this when I was trying to decant some of the ashes into a jar to take a walk up a mountain.

We have some of Pete’s ashes in a scattering tube for this purpose, but I didn’t want to put all of him up overseeing them Western District, so I figured I’d just pour some of the ashes into a smaller more portable container.

I nestled at the end of my bed with scattering tube of ashes and small container on the blanket box at the end of our bed.

I braced myself for an emotional challenge ahead.

I thought I had the scattering tube the right way up.

I didn’t.

I had it upside down, so as I was pulling up the internal tube - having removed what I thought was the top - I could feel what was happening ... the ashes were pouring out of the tube as I lifted it.

I laughed.

Because I knew what that meant. The chances of spilling the ashes during this process which would necessitate me touching them had increased exponentially.

With the tube flipped and gently shaken to try and get as much back into the tube as I could, I removed the lid.

It had indeed overflowed.

I cried and laughed at the fact I was now sitting on my bedroom floor with my husband’s ashes scattered on a blanket box. And there were way bigger bits of ‘ash’ in there which were now spilled out in front of me. It was laughable this predicament I found myself in.

And I sat on the floor and sobbed. Because that was, indeed, my dead husband scattered before me.

Looking at what was before me, I quickly realised I wasn’t going to be able to pour it from one container to the other.

So I wandered out to the kitchen still laughing and crying and recounting to the children what had happened: I spilled Daddy... and I grabbed a teaspoon out of the drawer to finish the job.

Then I went back and st back down and used a teaspoon - that I will potentially make coffee with tomorrow morning - and transferred some ashes from the scatter tube to the jar and put the lid back on the tube ... which I realised had Pete’s name on it ... therefore indicating it was the top. I have been storing it upside down for 18 months *facepalm*

So then how do you clean up spilled ashes of a loved one? Surely vacuuming them up was wrong.

I swept them up with my hands - like you would breadcrumbs on the kitchen table - and put them in the jar.

Which meant I held the ashes - all the chunky bits of them - in my hand ... and contemplated them for some time.

I wondered what part of Pete I was holding. And I sobbed and sobbed at the reality that it was the closes I’ll ever get to holding him again.

I put them into the jar.

And looked at my hands again. There was ash on them.

And that’s when I really lost it. I put my hands together and held them so tightly they hurt. Like I held on to his hands the day he came home from the doctor and he had to say they didn’t think it was just a pinched nerve - more likely Multiple Sclerosis or MND (or ALS for overseas readers) and we had sat on the bed crying together. Like the way he had let me hold on to and squeeze his hands during the labours of our four children.

I looked at my hands and realised that to anyone observing me rocking and crying that it possibly looked like I was praying.

And I cried and cried big ugly sobbing tears that I was holding hands with Pete, but when I looked, they were only my own. And they would only ever be my own. I would never hold his hands again. And my heart ached.

So after a bit of time exhausting myself, I realised I had to work out what to do with my hands that had remains left on them ... washing them seemed as wrong as vacuuming them.

So I dusted them onto my legs. Thinking I could have him on me for a bit longer.

I put a lid on the jar. The scatter tube back under my bed - in the correct upright position - and went to get the kids organised for some emotional mountain climbing.

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The ashes pic is below.

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Please do not look if you think this will upset you.

It really isn’t pertinent to the story to see. It’s ridiculous enough on it’s own. But I seriously had no idea, and I’m also all about taking the mystery out of death and grief.

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This is what the ashes of a cremated person looks like.