Confession Time

Some thoughts on my Dad. Or what’s left of him.

I never picked up my Dad’s cremains.

He died, and I gave my credit card number to the funeral director on the phone. The body was going to have to be autopsied and there was a backlog, so once the financial transaction was complete, I procrastinated.

After spending several months haunted by recurring nightmares of my Dad’s ashes being unceremoniously dumped in the garbage, I finally broke down and sent a text to my remaining family in Oklahoma. Here’s what I wrote:

Hey family. I’m sorry to start every message with, “I’m sorry…” things here are just a daily struggle. I know that everyone has their problems, and please know that I do not want to add to anyone’s pile.

I’ve been telling myself that as soon as X happens, I’ll come down and have a memorial service for Dad. And crap just keeps happening to push it back. I’ll be unemployed in 2 weeks, for example. My therapist recommended I set a date in the future as a goal to work for, which I’m doing.

In the meantime, I need a favor. Each one of you is authorized to receive Dad’s remains. Everything is paid for and paperwork should be in order. Can someone pick them up and hold them for me until I do make it down? Or, alternatively, pick them up and bury them with Mom’s for me?

This has been bothering me for over a year, and it’s taken me this long to be able to reach out and ask. I know that burying them is a huge ask, so please accept my apologies in advance if this is inappropriate. I love you all and truly wish that everything had worked out differently.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the way I see it, I handed this task off and it is now no longer my responsibility. You see, I was whining to my therapist that it was really unfair that no one in my family could see that I was paralyzed and that I desperately needed someone to do what my Mom would have done: stepped in and taken over. That’s what she did. It was kind of her thing.

My therapist at the time gently suggested to me that what I was wanting was actually kind of inappropriate, and that if I wanted someone else to do this thing, I was going to need to ask them to do it. I guess my broken brain is still processing that as it doesn’t see, wildly inappropriate for one of them to call me up and say, “Hey, can I help you out by doing this thing for you?” She mentioned a lot of stuff about boundaries that I obviously lost, but to my shock and surprise, I didn’t argue with her. And I finally did exactly what she said was appropriate. And they said they would: “No sorry needed cousin that’s what family does for each other I’ll let you know when it’s done love ya.”

And I’ve had radio silence since then.

I’m terrified to reach out and ask, because there’s a possibility the answer is No, We haven’t yet, making the possibility of dumpster ashes a distinct possibility. And if that’s the case, well—fuck it. Add it to my list of sins and calculate the punishment. Yes, it’s a horrible disrespectful act of negligence from an ungrateful son, but, it’s not like he’s feeling it anymore. I mean, he’s dead. In a hundred years the cemetery will probably be dug up and turned into a housing development. And in a thousand years, crustal displacement will probably shove the whole state of Oklahoma a half mile under the surface of the planet. And in a few billion years, the whole planet will be swallowed up by our dying sun. If Dad really cared about what was going to happen to his body, he could have made some plans. I did the best I could. You know what I did do? I kept his other son off the street and into a nursing home where his health baselines are all significantly improved. I worked with a lawyer to figure out probate and cleaned out the house and listed it with a realtor and managed to sell it before the banks foreclosed, no mean feat given the fact that we were 90 days behind on the mortgage when you died. And I continue to take your elderly chihuahua to the vet and sleep with her virtually every night.

So, I never picked up the ashes, and I don’t know what happened to them. I failed to have a memorial for my Dad, and that makes me a shitty son. I’d like to think that I’m not the shittiest Dad, though, and I really hope that counts for something.