Ashes to Ashes: Thoughts About Loss

When I was thirteen, my father passed away. I remember the cry I let out when my mother sat me down and told me. We were set to leave that morning for New Hampshire. The night before, I prayed to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in. I begged Him to end my father’s pain, no matter what that meant.

He had deteriorated quickly. By the time he sought a doctor, he had a tumor on his liver “the size of a baseball”–I’ll never forget that. I was angry at him. For drinking his blood sugar into the three and four hundreds, for not taking care of himself–as if following directions and treating his diabetes and not drinking Pepsi may have cured his cancer.

My grandmother, his mother, gave me some of his ashes and I put them in a little angel box. I think about it from time to time.

When I was eighteen, my boyfriend at the time and I lived on Reamstown Road, in his mother’s apartment, we had to get out quickly. He had warrants out for his arrest and his mom wanted him out. So we left. He had a key to his friend’s place next door. She was a nurse. We let ourselves in and he went into the secret place in one of her kitchen cabinets–we did a bunch of cocaine and tried to forget, while we waited for our ride.

I left everything I had there in his mother’s apartment, including the angel box with my father’s ashes in it. Stolen money, stolen emotions, stolen memories, everywhere I went it seemed like more things went missing. A lot of it I never really talked about. My boyfriend and I went and stayed with his ex-wife in a town a couple hours away.

I remember that my mom and stepdad went to that apartment on Reamstown Road. They must have gone for me, to salvage some of my belongings. All I remember is the horror I felt knowing about all the needles and other paraphernalia they must have found in drawers, underneath things, strewn about, everywhere. A nightmare shared. His ashes–my father’s–were never returned to me.

When I was 25, I had been clean for several years, and I had my very own apartment. I was living with a boyfriend at the time. He sucked. I was better off before him when it was just me and my cats. Maybe I wanted more cats to avoid the fact that he sucked. I adopted a little white kitten named Pax, which means “Peace”. He was the sweetest cat. He was completely white except for a gray spot on his head and the gray tip of his tail. I loved him and he loved me. We curled up together every night, and one night I noticed him breathing rapidly.

Maybe it was mother’s intuition, I knew something was wrong. I took Pax to the veterinarian and found out he had a small hole in his heart and blood was leaking into his chest cavity. It was compressing his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe. As I didn’t have much money, I didn’t have many options. The veterinarian offered to drain the cavity and let me take him home, stating that it would need to be done repeatedly and his quality of life would not be very good. Or I could have him humanely euthanized. I let them set him up and went into the room with him and pet him while he slowly slipped away.

I have his ashes in a small, wooden box with a lion carved into the top. He was my little lion heart.

When I was 34, my youngest’s father (Mason) passed away. His mother and I were not on good terms. She has his ashes along with her mother’s or someone else’s or a couple people’s. I can’t remember. She banned me from attending his memorial. I used to think about perhaps one day if and when we were on better terms (we are now), maybe talking with her about the ashes. That was before I realized I don’t want any parts of him to keep. He is gone in the physical, and no matter what mementos I possess, he’s not coming back. His ashes, wherever they are, aren’t part of him anymore.

A year and a half ago, I was 35, and my cat Sheldon was sick. He was my first cat when I had my own apartment. I liked him right away because he was a scruffy, wild kitten with twinkle in his eye. I relate. I adopted him through a friend of a friend. She lived in a small trailer and had cats inside, outside, everywhere were cats. When I went to see the cats, I politely sat on the edge of a chair that had litter scattered on it. There were puddles on her kitchen floor. Like a cat trap house. Who knows what would have become of him, but I took him, and Sheldon was my friend through various romances, three serious boyfriends, three children, various other cats, a couple dogs, some fish, and a pig. I guess you can say I love animals and I do what I can for them.

Sheldon started losing weight probably three or four years before he passed away. I took him to the veterinarian, and they offered to do blood work, letting me know it might or might not be conclusive, and there were so many different things that it might turn up, who knew whether I would be able to afford to find out. I regret not having the blood work done. Am I a horrible person?

I loved that cat. We may have grown distant through the years as I had more children and went through all the chaos with their fathers. I hate thinking I didn’t do enough for him.

After Mason passed away, I moved to a smaller, more affordable apartment. Sheldon had been hanging in, but I think the move did him in. Not long after, he began to drastically decline. He lost weight rapidly, his bones started to show. He started hanging out in the cool of the bathtub. I knew he was dying. He came to me, and spent as much time with me as he could, laying in bed with me again each night.

Sheldon became increasingly lethargic. I did not know what to do. I called the veterinarian and prepared to take him in for a Monday appointment after the weekend had passed to discuss quality of life, end of life, whatever they said. On Saturday, two days before the appointment, friends came over to help me paint my living room of the new apartment. The kids were away. Sheldon went into the opening space of my bedroom closet and laid down. His body was failing him, his breathing was slowing. I continually checked on him, and at one point, wasn’t sure he was breathing. I picked him up to see. He was breathing. Then he broke. His body went limp in my arms and the light left his eyes. He was a cat body, struggling breathing air. Maybe that breaking was it–his soul leaving body.

I ceremoniously and with great care laid him down on the comforter on my bed. I pet him for several moments and went back out to my friends. When I went to check on him again, he was no longer breathing. I pet him, carried him and put him into a shallow box and covered him with a towel.

Sunday was hard. The kids came home. I had to tell them Sheldon had passed. They asked to see him and pet him and say goodbye. And so we did. They wanted to keep going out into the mudroom to pet him. His body went into rigor. As it hardened, I told them this would be the last time. I didn’t want them to–I don’t really know what I didn’t want them to. Maybe I just wanted him to be safe in that box and not keep going out to pet him. In my way, I had said my goodbyes.

Monday morning, I called the veterinarian to let the office know. They offered me their sincere condolences and we planned for me to bring him in to be cremated. Several weeks later they returned his ashes to me, in a small wooden box, along with some pamphlets about grief. What to do if I needed help or if feelings of depression persisted or overtook me.

Much of my life has consisted of grief and loss. My three beautiful children have had more than their fair share of it. We are strong. They have seen death firsthand and so they have seen life. They know the value of moments, that they do not last forever. They understand people, and pets, everything, will come and go. Life is a cycle until the end. Then it is a new beginning. We know that there, our loved ones will be waiting in Eternity, and that this life is but a dream. Their ashes, never needed to be returned and were never lost. These bodies are borrowed clothes. We wear them for a while, until they are worn. Then they are recycled.

Allowing my children to freely experience their grief, sitting with them in those moments, is a gift. We are all only here just a little while. We have come full circle, and we are unbreakable.

Pax, his ashes, and Sheldon, his ashes, in their small wooden boxes, sit behind a dresser on a windowsill. Perhaps this summer, when we go to the beach and release balloons for Mason’s birthday, we’ll take along their ashes and scatter them along the shore. Their bodies had never experienced the ocean waves.

By Melissa Lemay

From: United States

Website: https://melissalemay.wordpress.com