Dahlia's ashes came last week. I spent the whole day doing nothing. I waited all day for the package to arrive, waiting for the bottom to drop out. I had to wait a while, too. Our wonderful Postal Service, ever causing me to question my faith in socialism, decided to wait until 5pm to arrive with an unceremonial cardboard box. Seeing the remains makes things real in a way. I panicked and felt a wave of anxiety come over me when opening the box. I was holding every physical remnant of Dahlia in a five pound box.
I called Jeff from Elemental Cremations, who has been an absolute Godsend, to figure out next steps. He told me to take some time with cremains. He kept using the pronouns "she" and "her" to describe the ashes. "She's in a plastic bag." "I can transfer her to an urn." and "Take some time to figure out what you want to do with her." It was off-putting. Even though it was frankly indistinguishable from the ashtray outside of the Two Bells on a Friday night, the remains were Dahlia in a very real, if very incomplete, way. He told me to look at urns, figure out what type of urn I wanted. I did a bit of this in the days after, and, honestly, in the days before.
| Does not contain the remains of Helen of Troy |
I found a simple, bamboo number. The one thing I didn't want was a typical, Grecian urn, sitting on the mantelpiece for all eternity, next to a picture of Dahlia with her faithful lapdog, the scent of potpourri wafting in the air. I wanted something that won't be found by an alien civilization millennia from now and thought to contain a Athenian priestess. With a vague idea of what I wanted, I set out exploring the wide internet for the perfect urn.
Jeff pointed me at a wonderful place called Lundgren Monuments. These urns were quite amazing, but a little too exquisite and more than Dahlia would want me to spend. Besides, she would never want cremains to be the focus of a room. It's far too morbid. The focus of the room should be the people in it, not the things around them.
Undeterred, I decided to explore the Wild West that is the internet for other urns. I went to a couple sites to see what my other options were. There were the obvious options: vase-shaped, cross-adorned brass urns and the like. Beyond those, however, the amount of options was far beyond the limits of my imagination.
Living on the top of the Left Coast, even after 23 years in the Midwest, you can forget that Middle America exists. Despite all the odds, Middle America still lives, and, as a result, Middle America still dies. When Middle America dies, they mourn in a way which is beyond the comprehension of you or me. Now, I understand that hobbies are very important to an individual. A motorcycle ride, a fishing trip or traveling to watch NASCAR can be a semi-religious experience to some people. I don't do these things myself, but I get their importance.
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| Bubba loved three things: Bud Light, Motorcycles and America |
It's one thing to enjoy these activities. I enjoy tons of Midwestern things from Football to Coney Island hot dogs. That said, I would never want to rest for all eternity inside a piece of tube steak, yet there are urns for all sorts of hobbies and interests. For example, you can get an urn for the motorcyclist, cowboy, or race enthusiast.
Part of me wants really hard to make fun of this, to point out the absurdity of motorcycle engine urns and just laugh. If there's one thing that drew me to Dahlia, it was her ability to look at the absurdity of existence and laugh. She would have seen these things and laughed, and let's be honest, it's pretty fucking funny.
That said, grief is a powerful force. We all make decisions which seem very strange from the outside. To a random observer, I've probably drank too much and laughed a little too loud since Dahlia left. If a spouse wants to remember their beloved on a golf course with his trusty five iron, it's probably not my place to get pious on how one grieves. Then again, my furry little bastards are never going into one of these.
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