Out of the blue one day, Mom told my brother and me that it was her wish to be cremated, not a common practice at the time. Maybe she’d read about it in the Readers Digest, or maybe her brother George had been cremated – he died young, a few months after Grandma, but he isn’t in any cemetery records.
When she died years later, we knew what to tell the funeral director. She looked nice in her lavender suit.
Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange has a wide, grassy park she loved. As a girl, she picnicked and hung out there with her school friends, “The Gang” she called them. Some of those friendships lasted all the way through to the bridge club that met every two weeks until her death.
After we received her ashes (not “cremains”, that’s an ugly, made-up word), my brother and I took a ride one evening to Eagle Rock. We walked across the grass, taking turns scattering the ashes until they were gone.
My brother was a construction crane operator. He took great pride in never having “dumped” a crane, and couldn’t understand how anyone could let that happen. When he died, his daughters scattered his ashes in the water at Sandy Hook, where his union brothers were building a bridge.
My dear wife died several years ago. She never expressed a preference, but she never said anything against cremation, so now I have her ashes in a rosewood box. I’ll have to figure out what to do with them one day. I thought about the ocean, she loved the ocean, but probably not there, given its current dirty state. As for myself, cremation is the way to go, no ocean for me either, thanks. Yes, I am feeling fine, thanks for asking.
Some people mix their parents’ ashes together after the second one dies. My younger son calls the practice “unseemly”, meaning improper. I’m not too keen on the idea either, I’m kind of a private person.