Stardust

   So first off I apologize to many of my friends and some family members for taking so long to call them back when they have expressed their condolences.   Losing a parent, or sibling, or even a close pet, hits everyone in different ways sending some into silence or onto the shoulder of a loved one, or sometimes into depression or a haze of empty bottles, be their liquid or pills.  For me at least, that hasn't been the case as my brother and I continued to share a few lasting moments before he departed, a weeklong sounding board of familiar and yet warped reflections (since we were seeing them through different eyes).  And yet, the commonality was seared into our heads once we stared at my mother's ashes, the reality of all that we knew, all that we shared, all that we came from was now sitting there as indistinguishable as what was sitting in our fireplace or what rested scattered on the ground after a blaze through a forest...it was all a place to which we too would return, carbon created from deep in space, the element of all life here on this planet.  It's rather amazing to think about, really, that in those cold and lightless regions too far away from us to even imagine, comes...us.

   Without being or sounding too morbid, if you've never held or seen human ashes, it proves to be a wake-up call.  Pieces of bone all mixed with a granular gray ash, a textile feel that is quite moving because you realize that it was once life, a beating heart, mind, and a set of eyes that could convey every feeling of caring and hope and fear year after year, a feeling not to be scared of but to be cherished, and a release which in our case proved more cathartic than gazing at a frozen image on paper.  A mother, a son, a brother or sister, an aunt...this practice of cremation is now also an industry that has been rapidly overtaking the older practice of burials, and here's what I discovered: one cremation uses enough energy to heat a home in the depths of winter for a week; crematoriums are often filled with unclaimed boxes of ashes (many people simply don't return to pick up their loved ones remains); some cultures find it important to personally push the button that sends their loved one's body into the oven receptacle (this is offered as an option even in crematoriums in the U.S.); elaborate caskets emerge in much the same form as cardboard at the end; and the newest cremation form is not heat but...water.

   The process of cremation is not as old as one might think, although the newer versions of gas or electric burning are still not accepted in more traditional societies such as that of the Hindu culture in India which is rife with funeral pyres (estimated to take the wood 50-60 million trees per year, which sounds like a lot but just the annual building of caskets here in the U.S. takes about 158,000 trees 16-inches in diameter).  The water process takes far less energy and is far more "friendly" environmentally (but not offered in my state), and was but one of many options I first heard on NPR.   Looking back, it seems odd that I would be listening to such podcasts discussing procedures such as composting bodies and natural (as in a body simply wrapped in cloth and buried near a tree) burials when some months later my own mother would no longer be alive and I would have to dive headlong into the subject.  At the time it seemed just another interesting science discussion to fill the airwaves, but one apparently as fleeting as life.

   One's head at such times is something that also becomes filled, although it is of a different nature becoming an odd mix of memories and reflections joining with seemingly endless details of cancelling insurances and other accounts.  It's a time of long waits on phones and sending in papers (official death certificate or a copy, one continually asks).  And despite all the resistance the personal begins to erode into a statistic, a bit of data to be removed from files and locked away from prying eyes (unfortunately, one also discovers the number of scammers that exist at such times, searching obituary notices to take advantage of homes vacant while mourners attend services or view accounts not yet closed and ready to be hacked...one's love for a person begins to mix with one's anger at those even considering such abuse).  And of course the thoughts of one's mortality crashes ashore, coming and going as gently and sometimes as violently as an ocean's wave, but constant now and grinding those once-defiant boulders of youthful age into grains of sand, a bit of calcium becoming as indistinguishable as the next little bit and yet holding the emotion and concern of a lifetime all blending into the whole.

   After a time, one grows a bit softer and for me at least, begins to get down to business as one must.  Initially you stare at what once was and yet become aware that another clock has begun to tick as if the business side is telling (yelling at?) you to snap out of it.  Direct cremation or cremation with services?  $500 or $5000 (or more, in many cases...casket burials can easily double the cost, a process sites such as Parting and Costco try to ease).  Embalming (not required, more expensive and also carcinogenic), autopsy, disposal...any and all of the terms are harsh and brutal and sound even more so even with the gentle face of the director trying to be as caring as possible.  It's your mother (or father, or son, or daughter) and there is no easy path to dealing with such finality.  And yet you look around and little else has changed.  The body needs to be moved and "taken care of;" the room needs to be cleaned and emptied, the accounts need to be closed, the photos need to be sorted.  It is not an easy time and yet, it is indeed reality.  The circle of life.

   Admittedly I was very fortunate.  My brother and I shouldered the burden equally, bouncing emotional responses with memories of growing up together, the good and the bad, the fun and the memories, the discipline and the getting away with it (it was mom, after all).  As with my mother, it was the summation of life spent together.  Luckily my wife's mother is still around, almost improving it seems; but my wife and I both realize that her time too will end eventually, as will ours.  Meeting with other friends we have come to also recognize that amidst all my sadness there is appreciation and that life has been good to both of us...we have lived many years and we have both had parents that have done the same.  There are others caught in war or natural disasters, parents who have lost babies and children, others who lives have been cut short with cancer or other diseases, some who have faced starvation or who live in constant fear or pain.  Some have no brother or sister, or at least one who is close.  It's been a good life for me and one which hopefully has a bit more to go...and if my mother were here, especially seeing her at such peace just hours before she passed away, I think hat she would have said the same thing.  Just as Elisabeth Kubler Ross (author of On Death and Dying) so eloquently put it: Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.