You never realize how little you know about death until someone dies and you’re left picking up the ashes. I mean that literally, even though it sounds like a great metaphor.
It’s been five weeks since my dad died. I’m sitting on a purple velvet couch in one of the rooms in the funeral home set up to hold a wake. I rub my palms into the fabric of the couch to help soothe me, making patterns with fingers pushing the velvet one way and the other.
Beside me is one of my best friends. I’d called Varia the previous week and shared how I’d be going to pick up my father’s ashes alone. It didn’t make sense for my younger brother to make the trip in from the suburbs, I justified to myself. I could do this without him.
“It’ll be so funny,” I told her, “sitting on the subway with my dad’s ashes in my backpack. Maybe I’ll even place the urn in my lap to see the response I’d get. LOLSOB.”
“There’s no way I’m letting you do that,” she tells me, with a gentle firmness in her voice. “I’ll borrow my parent’s car and come with you.”
Normally, I’d tell her not to worry about it. Say something like “It’s no big deal.” But in the wake of this grief, I’m learning for the first time to accept these offers of care – no matter how awful they make me feel. I repeat the words “I’m not a burden,” on loop in my brain.
Back at the funeral home, I snap out of this memory when the funeral attendant asks me, “Would you like to sit with him for a little bit?”
“What do you mean…sit with him?” There is no body. There’s just a large bag of ashes.
What would it be like to sit with my father in this new manifestation? I imagine this encounter happening in a small room. There’d be a wingback chair, this one with turmeric-colored velvet – but I’d remain standing. My father would sit across from me: a metal box on top of a cherry wood side table with beautifully carved edging. Something antique and expensive for sure. Far beyond my budget.
I would solemnly address the box: “Father.”
And all I would get in return is the cold, steely stare of this metal box. His silence expected and all too familiar.
The funeral attendant senses my ambivalence and delicately (they all speak delicately. Were they trained that way?) tells me, “Not everyone wants to do this,” and the fear of being a bad child dissipates.
“No. That’s okay. Thank you for offering,” I stammer, as though I’m at a dinner party and have just been offered a hors d’oeuvre that looks pleasant enough but I want to save room for the main course. The attendant nods and then leaves the room with the urn I brought with me.
The vessel I chose looks more like a vase than an urn. I thought it might be nice to put flowers in it and place it with the shrine I created for my mother the previous year, on the twentieth anniversary of her death. Mother and father placed side by side before my thirty-second year. But I’m not sure I want to make room for him.
The attendant returns to tell me that it’s taking a bit longer than normal to fit my father inside. The neck of the vessel I chose is quite thin.
I imagined him using one of those funnels (plastic, or maybe aluminum) that you keep in the kitchen to transfer liquid from one container to another. He’d slowly and carefully pour my father’s remains so as not to let any ash fly away.
As it turns out, they leave the ash inside of the plastic bag, “In case the urn breaks.” The funeral director failed to mention that detail when I told him I’d be bringing in my own vessel. No one said a word about how big it should be, or that the amount of ash created by a human body is much more than the movies will have you think.
When he returns, he is holding the vessel and a black reusable shopping bag. Inside the bag are some documents, and what remains of my father’s, well, remains.
I stare at his square-toed leather shoes (I’ve always disliked this sartorial choice) and ask,
“What do I do with the rest of the ashes?”
“Ummm” he pauses, “well…that’s up to you.”
Those who’ve grieved will tell you that any capacity you had to handle surprises vanishes in the wake of a loved one’s death. Surprises are unwelcome guests and you’re angry at their audacity for showing up unasked. Now imagine that the surprise is a green velvet sack containing a plastic bag full of ashes and tiny bones — something else I learned: a cremated body isn’t just ash alone.
Varia asks the attendant if we can have a few minutes. After he leaves she looks in the bag to tell me how much ash still remains.
“It’s a lot. Probably another vessel’s worth?”
In the weeks that follow, I’ll find myself wondering how this whole scene could have been avoided. Wouldn’t it be really great if they had a size chart? Like the ones you find when you shop online that tell you how a size medium fits if your bust is a 34 and your waist a 29. You would run your finger down the first column to find the weight of your father: 160 lbs. at time of death. And then you’d slide your index finger from left to right: If a human body weighs 160 lbs, you will need a vessel x inches in diameter by x inches tall. Simple, right?
In this moment, staring at this bag full of ash, I find myself doing the math. Perhaps if it was a cup’s worth, I could just leave it and not feel too bad about it.
How much ash is disposable?
How much of my father can I put in the garbage without being the worst human ever?
How much ash until it becomes a disavowal of his existence?
The idea of putting half of my dad in the trash is too much. I decide that I’ll just need to find a second vessel. “This is a thing you can do,” I tell myself. I repeat this over and over again.
Outside of the funeral home we pop the trunk and I put the urn down.
“Maybe let’s place him like this, so you know, he doesn’t move around as we’re driving?” Varia looks at me. “Is it weird that I just referred to your dad’s ashes as him?”
I laugh because I have no clue how I should refer to the ashes. Is it “him” or “it”? Is it “the ashes” or “your father’s ashes”? Which of the options allows him to remain a subject rather than an object? And is there any form of address that can hold space for the fact that he is, now, just ash? I do not know these answers.
We drive towards the side of town filled with little vintage shops in the hopes of finding a second urn. I realize that I’ll also need to figure out where to store the bag of ash. My father in an urn is one thing; my father in a reusable shopping bag is another.
I call my friend Katherine and ask if she could keep my father at her place until I’ve found another urn. She seems like the kind of friend who’d be cool to hang with a bag of ashes.
“Hey, I never thought I’d ever ask another human this question, but would you be the keeper of my father’s ashes for a few days?”
Without skipping a beat: “I think the technical term is ash keeper. And yes, I’d be honored.”
Earlier that week, Katherine rented a car so that we could drive out to the social services office in the suburbs where my dad lived before he was forced to move into assisted living in the city. We need to present some documents that are required for funeral assistance. Because, of course, we had no money for a funeral or for cremation. The poor never do.
I stay in the car while Katherine goes inside to speak to the social worker. I stare blankly out of the passenger side window, eyes out of focus, towards another industrial-style building. I’m familiar with these surroundings. Every suburban town has a tucked away pocket of industrialized buildings where people can get their car serviced, buy discounted furniture, or, in our case, speak with social services.
The driver’s seat door opening shocks me.
“So it looks like this office can’t help us because your father was living in Toronto when he died.”
“Yeah,” I responded slowly, “but didn’t they tell you that you needed to come here instead?”
“Yep!” Katherine responds irritated by the bureaucratic run-around we’ve been given. She slams the door and puts the address of the closest Toronto office into the car’s GPS. We pray that we’ll make it there, during rush hour, before it closes in an hour.
I watch the minutes slip by slowly on the clock. One part of me is anxious to get there in time or else we’ve spent money on a rental car that I’m too poor to afford, and the other part of me is totally apathetic. My father is dead. What else matters?
With fifteen minutes to spare, we rush into the office and explain what’s happened to the first social service worker we can find.
“Oh, I’m so sorry that you’ve been running around. I’m sure I can help you. I’ll just need bank statements from your father’s account,” she explains as she leads us to a cubicle and sits us down at a small circular beige table and gestures towards some scratchy-fabric chairs. I’m always amused by the ways in which offices that are supposed to support the most marginalized are made totally inhospitable to your comfort.
At this point I need to explain to her that the bank refused to give me any statements, despite having power of attorney. As it turns out, as soon as you declare someone dead, the bank must lock the account. So that, you know, children don’t fight over the bundles of money that are surely being stored away. This wouldn’t be a problem except that social services needs to be able to prove that my father, who was disabled for twenty-years, and who lived off of government disability cheques, was not secretly hoarding thousands and thousands of dollars that could pay for his funeral.
The social worker mutters about protocols and policies, and as tears start to well up in my eyes, she whispers to me, “We’ll just say that we saw the bank statements and it’s all good.” Her kindness causes the tears to spill over and I ask her if I can give her a hug.
“Yes,” she smiles, and opens her arms to me. A few minutes later she’s printed out the paperwork I need to bring to the funeral home so that my father can be cremated.
***
When I was twelve years old, less than a year after my mother died from cervical cancer, my dad began to have a harder time picking up objects. He’d drop things more and more. A glass would slip out of his hand like water and shatter on the kitchen floor. This was the first sign that something was wrong.
There was so much my father never told us about the ways that autoimmune disease would transform his body. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, begins with limb onset. First the muscle tissue in the arms and legs deteriorates. Once your limbs become useless the disease goes after your diaphragm, weakening it until bacteria builds up in your lungs and breathing becomes labored. Eventually, there’ll be no more swallowing. Everything will remain motionless. You will lie prostrate with no ability to move, speak, or communicate. There is no known cure for ALS. You get it, and within two to four years you die. My dad was one of the ten percent of cases that live longer than ten years. He had the disease for over twenty years. His life was a form of slow death.
It would take years and years of neurologists appointments before they realized that my dad had an incredibly rare form of ALS – rare because it was slow moving. It took about seven years before my dad lost complete use of his arms, and another three before his legs weakened. He kept falling, and without his arms to break his fall, he suffered many concussions, until my brother begged him to start using a wheelchair. Things stayed relatively stable until two years ago when my father ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.
I became my father’s primary caregiver. By the age of seventeen, I was bathing him, helping him get dressed, moving the fork from his plate to his mouth during dinner. I’d already begun doing the laundry at the age of twelve, cooking all of the meals for my father and brother. Now, we added other duties to the list: grocery shopping, paying bills, accompanying him on outings. Once I went to university, and wasn’t home as often, my brother took on caregiving in my absence, and when I’d return home on the weekends, I worked my shifts at the McDonald’s up the street and took over the caregiver tasks. We’d become my father’s surrogate body.
My father tried to alleviate some of the pressure by applying for government disability support. This would enable us to have personal service workers come multiple times a day. Despite neurologist’s letters attesting to the fact that my father could no longer use his arms, he was denied. This is usually where people give up. But my father was nothing if not a fighter. He stood before the judge, arms limp at his side, and was put on the disability program.
This helped relieve much of the burden, but by then all three of us had become blended. My father would tell a friend that he’d make her some DVDs of her favorite shows, and my brother or I would stand beside the computer, eject the disk, place it in the case, and wait for the next to be ready. We didn’t mind helping my father – whose love language was clearly acts of service. What made us feel so awful is that he never asked for our help. It was always a demand. Our compliance was always presumed before we could give our consent. And, if we said no, or asked if we could do this task later, we’d be met by his steely stare, tightly closed mouth.
By the time my father got pneumonia, I’d been living away from home for five years. What we hadn’t realized until then was that the disease had moved inward. His diaphragm had weakened, making it difficult for his lungs to fully expand. Bacteria found a home in the crevices, later transforming into aspiration pneumonia. And this pneumonia led to a panicked call from my brother telling me that our father was being rushed to the hospital because “he can’t breathe…his face has turned blue.”
I got on the next train from Toronto to the suburbs where my dad and brother still lived. When I arrived at the hospital, my father was sedated, tubes running into his mouth and nose. I watched as my dad’s eyelids fluttered, and wondered if his eyes would ever open again. Two days later they did. He’d live for another four years.
After months of recovering in the hospital, my father was moved to a continuing-care hospital where he could receive the round-the-clock support that he needed. And it is here that he’ll eventually die. The call from the nurse comes in at 8pm: “As you know, your father had a bronchoscopy today,” – no, I did not know – “and he’s not doing well. You’ll need to get here quick.”
***
There’s so much we’re not told about planning a funeral in our death adverse world. And the poor are left even more in the dark. Here’s what I learnt:
Don’t ask your father if he ever got around to having his will notarized. (Do the poor even have wills?) Just assume that everything will be fine. His death is still years away, right?
Forget about the fact that your father’s monthly rent payments come out of your bank account so that when you check your balance two days before your rent is due, you will be shocked that you no longer have enough money to pay yours. If your father were alive, he would have sent you his rent payment by now. But dead men can’t make email money transfers.
Because the will was never notarized, you’ll need to pay hundreds of dollars for another set of papers that will establish you as your father’s next of kin, and thus grant you access to his bank account. When the math is all said and done, the amount you’ll have to pay to retrieve the funds is more than you lost. You give up. This system wasn’t made for poor people like you.
You will learn to accept the help of others. Your best friend offers to start taking donations for your rent. Exhaustion and grief will outweigh the poor shame you feel.
The pastor at the long-term care facility where your father lived and died won’t understand why you’re not doing things according to tradition. He’ll question your suggestion that maybe one of your father’s friends would like to give a eulogy. “That’s usually just for family members,” he’ll tell you. Feel the anger wash over you when you utter the words, “There is no other family. Just me and my brother.”
Did you know that social services only cover the cost of cremation and not the funeral service itself? You’re learning so much.
Your university has emergency bursaries. The mountain of paperwork you’ll have to submit will be overwhelming. Let your friend who’s a Virgo and “loves forms” help you. And then cry into her shoulder when your university denies your application. Paying for a funeral when your poor isn’t, apparently, an emergency.
You learn that love can look like an excel spreadsheet, filled with the names of your friends, and the tasks they’ll do so that you can have a funeral service for your father. Love can look like email money transfers deposited into your bank account without you having to ask. Love can look like so much more. Lean on the magic of community and repeat the words: “It is okay to receive help. I am not a burden.”
There are so many ways to hold a service for those lost. Tell the pastor that you won’t be inviting anyone else up to speak after you give the eulogy. You are not responsible for anyone else’s grief. And really, you’re tired of hearing everyone praise your father. What would they say if they knew how he treated you? Would they still praise him then? Give the eulogy you want to give, which isn’t really a eulogy, but a meditation on forest fires and all of the things you never received. The metaphor will veil the accusation. You loved your father. And he caused so much trauma. Both things can be true simultaneously.
When the funeral ends, you’ll feel numb. Friends will start to pack up the remains of the food, others will say goodbye. Suddenly you’re crouching on the floor in your red pumps and you’re crying. A hand places itself on your back. “It’s all happening too quickly,” you’ll utter through the tears, “Can we please just slow down?” Now sitting at a table surrounded by those who love you, you will cry some more before you realize that what you’re feeling is relief. No one taught you how to plan a funeral when you’re poor. And still you did it. Your poorness: no longer some tragic flaw. Your poorness: a sign of your resiliency.
***
I’m with my father’s ashes again, but this time I’m sitting down. I’ve asked my boyfriend if he’ll help me get the rest of my father into the second urn. It’s a big ask when you’ve only been dating a few months, but he does have a taxidermy rat on a shelf above his bed, which as far as I’m concerned is a pretty good omen.
That night at his apartment, after we’ve both had a few glasses of wine, we sit on the floor in his bedroom and I run my hands over the surface of the bag before pulling the drawstring and reaching inside.
I pause: an intense wave of nausea hitting me as I place the box on the floor. When I open it to see the gray matter inside the plastic bag, I laugh – it is a lot of ash – and then the tears come. How can this be my dad? I can’t wrap my head around this transformation.
Since the mix up at the funeral home, I’ve been reading about cremation. I want to understand this transformation of body into ash.
I turn back to David, “Did you know that the retort – that’s the name for the brick chamber where they burn the body – has to reach 1500 degrees Fahrenheit before a successful cremation can occur? First thing to burn is the cardboard box containing the body. Then, because the body is like eighty percent water, comes the evaporation. After that…” and I continue to list off all that I’ve learnt, barely pausing to breathe as I stroke the green velvet bag.
David understands that my rambling is my way of trying to take control of the situation, an old trauma response that I still haven’t fully shed. He lets me finish, before gently reminding me to breathe.
After a few minutes, I pick up the bag and begin to massage it into the opening of the jar. This time, I got something with a much larger opening. The ashes are almost in, but I can’t quite fit the lid on. Sensing my mounting frustration, David asks if he can try. And with gentleness that I didn’t know was possible, he uses his fingers to create a different shape with the plastic bag. The lid goes on.
“Where would you like to place him for the night? I can clear whatever space you’d like.”
I look around the room, the jar in my hands. I keep running my hands over the surface. The jar protrudes, expanding in the middle. Just like my father’s stomach. This feels like the last chance I have to be with him, to care for him.
Eventually I decide that the antique desk is where I’d like to place him. Both of my parents loved to go antique shopping, and I’ve since inherited an old red wagon that I cherish. One of the only fights my parents had, I’m told, was over a coffee table with taxidermied birds inside, meant to look like a chicken coop.
“It was rare that I said no to your mother. But this time, I said no.”
My mother did not win that battle, but if she had I think about how I would proudly display that table in my living room. I can’t explain why, but there is something beautiful about her desire to give that bird a home.
David thoughtfully removes all of the objects and wipes the dust off of the top of the antique desk. I place the urn down and get into bed. When I open my eyes I see a glow coming from the desk. Three candles have been lit.
“I figured it might be nice,” he explains. “We can leave them burning all night if you’d like.” And so we do.
When I wake in the morning the candles have gone out. We put the urn in my backpack, alongside its companion, and get ready for our journey to the town I grew up in. We’re going to scatter the ashes.
Our first stop is the cemetery where my mother was buried. A double plot, for her and my father, until he decided that he wanted to be cremated. We were too poor to pay for a headstone, and having only visited once or twice after she passed, I have to call the funeral home to ask for directions to the plot.
“We’ve come to spread some of my father’s ashes,” I tell the funeral attendant.
“Oh, you can’t just do that. There are bones in the ashes. But we can bury the ashes for you,” he tells me. “It’ll cost $500.”
I laugh as I tell him that my father’s cremation was paid for by social services. We do not have $500 to spare. We’ll spread his ashes elsewhere.
My brother is indignant, “Dad needs to be beside mom! Fuck them. We’re going.”
And so we made a plan. He drives with a friend of his to the cemetery and David and I meet them there. When we get to my mom’s plot, I step out of the car, peering from side to side to see if anyone who looks like they might work there is around. The coast is clear.
In front of my mother’s grave, we each take a few moments to say some words to her. And then David and my brother’s friend keep watch for us as we sprinkle some ashes upon the grass. Our mission successful, we smile the way that you do when you’ve gotten away with something. And then we run – unnecessary at this point, but it feels right – back to our cars, laughing as we drive off.
Stepping out of the car the next time, I look at the house I grew up in. We’ve returned here to scatter my father’s ashes. I haven’t seen the house since I was a teenager. The memory of coming home to find an eviction notice taped to our door has kept me away. As we wait for my brother to arrive, I tell David that not much has changed. The same peach colored paint on the garage, the same stones up to the front door. It’s uncanny.
Suddenly my brother’s arm is around me and we begin to walk towards the walkway that leads to the forest behind our childhood home. We enter the forest and we scatter as we go, recalling old stories about all of the times that I snuck out of the house as a teenager so that I could go and smoke cigarettes with older boys in the woods. The ravine looks so much smaller now than it did when I was younger.
Eventually, we find our way to the back of our childhood home with the remains. My mother died in this house, and so it feels fitting that we leave some of my father here as well.
My brother and I look at the backyards, trying to recall what ours looked like from the back. Once we find it, we empty the urn. Mission complete. It is only then that I look up and realize that we got the wrong house.
“We had a tiny window just beside the porch landing. I remember because when I would sneak out I used that window to get in,” I tell them.
My brother and I look at each other. “Well…damn,” he says. And we burst out laughing.
Margeaux Feldman (they/them) is a writer, artist, and graduate student in the MFA in Creative Writing at CalArts. They completed their PhD in English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. Their essays and book reviews have been published in GUTS Magazine, The Ex-Puritan, PRISM, and Rabble. Margeaux’s first book Touch Me, I’m Sick: A Memoir-in-Essays will be published with Beacon Press in 2025. They also run the popular instagram account @softcore_trauma, where they make memes about living with trauma and chronic illness.