Wait for it, that wasn't the funny.
She died about a year and a half ago, and it still surprises me sometimes to remember its been that long.
After part of Mom's ashes were thrown into the wind (between torrential downpours on a Kansas highway) there was still a big bag of Mom left over. Carried from one daughter's house to another, (like Queen Lear) she eventually landed in my home office, all tarted up in a party gift bag since the funeral home's respectable somber black carrying bag had ripped. (I hope she liked polka dots. I do.)
We divided Mom between any family members who wanted a piece of her. That turned out to be three daughters, (Becka, Margie and me) one honorary daughter, (Becky S.) and three grandchildren. So, we split Mom seven ways.
I'm not squeamish, but the cremains (lovely word) bothered me. In addition to the powdery stuff one might expect, her bag contained large bone fragments, some a couple inches long and exposing the spongy inside structure. They gave me the willies. This was part MY MOTHER'S ACTUAL BODY of all things. Ewww.
Cremation is like turning a person into a bulk grocery item. Suddenly you need a scoop and a plastic bag to deal with them.
My first in-person experience with cremains was 14 years ago. My friend, Malin, held an informal memorial for her beloved cat (named Clubber due to a sixth toe on each foot). She scattered Clubber's ashes into Chicago's part of Lake Michigan, gently pouring the ashes into her palm and then tossing them into the waves, handful after handful.
I felt sad for her. Loss sucks. Looking down at my hands twisting in my lap, being all inwardly reflective about life and death, I discovered Clubber's ashes had blown awry and were now clinging to my black jeans.
Craptastic.
Just great. What do I do now? I wondered. Would it be offensive to brush off Clubber like so much stray dust?
Do I ignore the presence of her cat's ashes on my pants and just let him follow me home on the subway? Just let it slide that I was (technically) transporting a body on the Red Line train?
I don't remember what I did. (Sorry Malin! Sorry Clubber!) I just remember that suddenly cremains were not an abstract concept, they were physical reality, one that demanded some etiquette of which I was ignorant. As if I needed another area of etiquette where I could unwittingly display my deficits.
I thought of the Clubber fiasco yesterday as my sisters and I got down to the business of separating our mother's body into seven plastic bags. Does one pour out one's mother like dumping sugar into coffee, or measure her out like one is making cookies?
I went to the kitchen to find a scoop of some sort. I wanted to divide her as evenly as possible to avoid the inevitable sibling fights: "Hey, she got more!"
I grabbed a deep serving spoon. Becky S., the honorary daughter, held the bags while I scooped, leveled, and dispensed the ashes. Cookies it is.
Most of the time I was growing up, my mom was about 300 pounds (I think).
She never tried to lose weight. She had given up by the time I was old enough to be cognizant of the fact that she was considered overweight. The last few years she was alive she lost over a hundred pounds due to weird eating preferences and a shrinking appetite. But she wasn't trying to lose any, I don't think.
On the other hand, I've lost and gained back significant amounts of weight three times in my life.
She also smoked cigarettes as long as I knew her. Numerous times she tried to quit smoking, struggling mightily and failing each time. When she entered the hospital three weeks before she died, naturally she wasn't allowed to smoke there, so she declared she'd quit. She said that since she couldn't walk, all we had to do is keep them away from her and she'd be a non-smoker. So, at age 71, three weeks before she died, she finally quit smoking. When it no longer mattered.
Considering my mother's now in ash-form, that's kind of funny.
I thought of that as I scooped her cremains into a bunch of bags.
And to top off her list of late-coming efforts, after death and at the age of 72 and a half, my mother was finally on Weight Watchers.
You see, the serving spoon I had grabbed was designed by Weight Watchers to hold exactly a half-cup while disguised as a normal, if beautiful, serving spoon; no one would be the wiser that you were watching your portion sizes.
She'd been served.
It turned out that there was enough of her to go around the seven bags twice with my half-cup spoon. We each got exactly one cup of Mom.
See why I'm reminded of the bulk food section?
Worried that the big honking bone fragments would freak out the grandkids, we ran the ashes through a strainer and one of the sisters adopted most of them.
I strained my own bag of ashes too, since the bones were giving me the aforementioned willies.
But I sat there for a few minutes, just staring at the strainer full of splintered bones. This was Mom. She'd looked better, but I couldn't give away her bones just because I couldn't face what they really were: slivers of human bones. Maybe the creep factor will lessen. I just can't let go yet of what little I have left of her.
I put "bones" in the search box of my iPhone Bible ("Bible Bingo" for the 21st century) and came up with Psalm 51:8.
"Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice."
Mom's life was not easy. Her death was pretty hard too.
Her bones have been crushed.
I hope though, that they can now rejoice in the Lord, somehow teaching my own tired bones how to join in.
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