The Strange Box

Taking possession of human remains is a very serious thing. It is one of those events that causes a great deal of introspection. There is an implied responsibility, a sense of the sacred. And - it is just plain weird.

How many times in your life can you turn to someone and say, "So - my father's ashes have been delivered to my house. They are in a box on the dining room table. The box is - lovely." It is a blond oak with brass corner things. When you open it, there is a brass urn - rectangular in shape with rounded corners.

The box is a very nice looking box but it is not the sort of box I would pick to place on the table as part of ordinary decor. I think the shape of it is funereal, but I may be influenced in my perception because I know what is inside. It is the sort of box you bury, but not in your backyard.

There is some poetic justice in having this box sit on the dining room table. It is the table my grandfather created in 1940 when he found the top of it underneath the house on Holland Ave. He turned the legs himself, attached them to the top and created a table. He placed that table in the dining room - where it remained for the next 65 years. My father sat at that table many times. He did his homework there and he tinkered with things there and he ate there - a thousand times?

What would he say had he known that the ashes of his body - all that remains of him on this earth - would one day rest upon this table and that his daughter would be unsettled by their mere presence? He might have laughed. Maybe he would have caressed the spot he thought his ashy bones would settle. Maybe he would have walked away, too overwhelmed to think about it.

My son walked past the box several times before realizing what it was. I lifted it out of the non-descript and everyday cardboard container and tried to hand it to him, unaware how heavy it was going to be. My son did not wish to handle the box. He stepped backward. Strange? How would I know?

Although tempted a few times to say that "my father was delivered" to my house by some guy driving a Ford Explorer, I resisted. My father is not in this box. What remains of my father has been reduced to something like 8 pounds of ashes - ashes that, if I remember correctly, look strangely like what gets scooped out of the barbecue after a few weeks of grilling. The body - the man - is gone.

"You have memories," the well-meaning say, and I want to reply that they are not enough. Memories are not enough. I have emotions. I have anger. I have a deep and abiding sadness. I have frustration that I cannot pick up the phone and tell him something. He is not here.

I have a box. A strange and unsettling box that needs to be somewhere out of my sight because it reminds me that he is gone. I had whole days when I was starting to feel better. Hours would go by and I wouldn't think about him. But now I am reminded. My father is dead. All I have is a box.

And a box on the table is not enough.