November 1 — the Day of the Dead. Family Humour seems appropriate here.

November 28, 2014

As I sit here in my office, The Family Morgue, my sister Debby’s ashes come to mind. Probably because they’re sitting 10 feet away in an early Canadiana jam cupboard that was once hers. Now her ashes are about to be joined by my father Eric’s. It’s times like right now when you need an uplifting story.

Some years ago my sister died of a heart attack. She was very large and when we saw the cardboard cremation coffin, my mother blurted the obvious. “She’ll never fit in there.” Well she did. And before we had time to agree on the next step – disposal of the ashes – Debby’s ashes were in my parents’ condo locker. Both boxes of her. My husband, daughter and I thought Debby would want to be scattered at the cottage, and my father wanted a proper gravesite. So I had her split up, so to speak.

Enter the cat. When we cleared out Debby’s house, my daughter opened a box on the mantle. “Ew. What’s this?” “George,” I said. Debby had saved her favourite cat’s ashes. I was touched and kept the ashes. They were in a sweet little box of polished wood that had the lines of something a Chinese Shaker might make. I attached George’s photo and he sat in my office – for a year.

Years pass.  Then one day, agitated by Alzheimer’s, my father said, “I have a dead daughter in the basement.” It was time to concede to his wishes to place Debby in the family plot in a real cemetery. We thought one urn would be more fitting and I made arrangements with the funeral home to repackage her. Ahhh. At last, what to do with George. I took his bag of ashes out of the small box and I went to my parents where my mother put each of the two urns of Debby’s ashes into sturdy bags, and then into my car. Sturdy bags. I should have known.

I was in ratty old jeans – I was going to be moving stuff, right? I took the two sturdy bags from my car and looking bedraggled, I entered the funeral home carrying two LCBO bags. And the bag of George. I walked straight into a real funeral. The appropriately dressed funeral director slid me into a side room and I explained what I wanted — the two large urns combined, and this tiny bag tucked into the top. The funeral director took discretion to a new high. Not a twitch, a sideways glance, or any sign that this might be unusual. Or irregular. Maybe even illegal. Minutes later I drove home with one urn and two spirits. Into the jam cupboard they both went. Who knew how long the next step might take. Years.

The family plot had a problem. It had one gravesite for one regular coffin, or eight cremation urns. The cemetery would not let Debby into the plot — her name wasn’t on the 1920 deed issued three generations earlier. The cemetery tried to sell me a cremation niche big enough for both of us. What a thought. Locked in a vault with my sister and her cat — for eternity.

Even more time passes until I give up and organize a family meeting to purchase a small cemetery vault. It’s out of the jam cupboard and into my car for the urn. I get my parents to the cemetery, but by this time my father Alzheimer’s is advanced and out of nowhere he insists we bury Debby, not in the Toronto cemetery where we sat, but up north in Bobcaygeon. (There’s a great shoe store there so it wasn’t a totally bad idea.) The meeting aborts and on the way home my father asks, “Where’s Debby now?” “In the trunk of my car,” I say. “And she’s not going to Bobcaygeon,” my mother adds.

It was back into the jam cupboard for Debby and George. More years pass.

My father, Eric, died a few days ago and this time we’ve immediately dealt with the ashes question. “Barb will drive him around in her car for awhile,” my mother said. Someone had already asked if I’d keep my father’s urn until my 90-year-old mother dies. That means I’d have the remains of two (three if you count the cat) in my office.

My mother-in-law always wanted to live in Oakville. She now resides there — on the beach in front of some quite splendid homes. My friend’s Jewish father was cremated and couldn’t be buried in the Jewish cemetery — he’s now on the fence line between the cemetery and the golf course. I swear our lake is silting in from people hiring floatplanes to sprinkle their parents into the water.

The last time my father smiled was when I talked about the cottage. My sister’s dream was to live there. We will scatter their ashes at the cottage.

I never did tell my parents about finding George.

k