Ashes

In the end, my father's remains only stayed the weekend with us. I didn't like having them at my house one little bit. I texted my sister over the weekend, trying to come up with a game plan for the disposal of the cremated remains. I refuse to have them scattered at my house. I do not want any kind of daily reminder of him. I looked into prices of having the remains placed at a cemetery, and what goes into getting a permit to scatter them in a public place. He liked Deception Pass, but that's a long drive and looked to be a little complicated to be able to legally spread them there. My sister suggested she could spread them at her house when she planted trees in the spring. I think she expected me to also spread them at my house so it would be a 50/50 split, but again.... No daily reminders please. So in the end I took the box to the post office and shipped them to my sister. 

Proof that I am a hard-hearted person, leaving the box in the shed. 

I succumbed to curiosity before going to the post office. The required box for mailing human cremated remains is about 3 times larger than it needed to be. There was a length of brown paper scrunched in to prevent the remains container from rolling around too much. It was not as much packing paper as I would have expected the funeral home to use for safely mailing remains, but oh well. They were the budget option, so I shouldn't complain. 

Ultimately, there's not much left after the cremation. It could have been a bag of flour just looking at it.

 I taped the box back together again, with my sister's address covering mine. I belatedly realized it would have been cheaper to have originally have the remains mailed to my sister, but decisions needed to be made in the wake of the unexpected death and confusion of it all. 

The drive to the post office was my last moments with my dad. About 6-7 minutes of me yelling at the box sitting in the passenger seat. I guess some things needed to be said. Saying how he had made me feel. Calling him names. I don't swear as a rule. It's not something that appeals to me. But there was something immensely satisfying about calling him the south end of a donkey. Words matter, and there was something cathartic about those particular words. He had to just take my anger and not angrily justify himself, something he was unable to do in life.

Once I made it to the post office counter, the guy lead with "I'm sorry for your loss." Then told me that this particular box would have to be sent certified mail, implying the extra cost. I said I knew that, and I paid the $107 to mail the box to Iowa. I was done with it, and I was glad to be.