Ashes to Ashes

The spiral of realization, or: how being unloved set me free.

My father’s remains went on quite the journey before they went into the ground.

Let me back up. First my father disinherited me—

Eh-not that far. Fast forward a skip—

There. First, he died—

No, not that far.

First, he told me he wanted to donate his body to science.  Then he died.

My sister Carla started a text chain with Pop’s biological children, everyone except Lacey. Carla started the business of “making arrangements”in that thread, and sang my virtues to the other two for taking on the problem of Giving His Body to Science.

That’s when the first postmortem shot was fired. Giacomo texted: I’m not sure Lia should be in charge. After all, she hates Pop so much that she will probably throw his body off a cliff.

Damn you, Giacomo. Always putting in unnecessary clauses; like, “after all.”

I saw red, left the chat, blocked my brother, and muttered angrily to myself and my husband for weeks.

Despite the Dumpster Accusation, I was still permitted the honor of finding “a science” that would take Pop’s remains. It turns out, there are fewer Sciences that accept the corpses of overweight, ex-smoker, old, white men with heart disease. After many phone calls, I found a poor soul at some lab in Oregon (“Go Ducks! Hahaha, tysm”) who took mercy on me and clicked on some computer keys that allowed their facility to take his body, ship it to Oregon, cremate him for us, and ship his remains back in a plastic bag inside of a black box.

The box ended up with Carla, who dumped in our father’s empty office building, her former workplace, which we had yet to sell. Possibly spooked by the death-ness of it all, or maybe just sick of the old coot, she let our father’s ashes sit there on top of a file cabinet for about three months, collecting dust among the tchotchkes, the antique furniture, and the fucked-up paintings.

I did not approve of this plan. Being the youngest, my approval was rarely consulted. I myself prefer to complete the circle, finish the rites, honor the ancestors, and send off the dead, motherfuckers may they be.

Carla didn’t share my urgency. Her normal way of dealing with pressure was to put multiple people off at once by talking them into a bored stupor. She was in no hurry, because unbenknownst to me at the time, she was getting pressure from The Elders to cough up the ashes (no, not the ones in her lungs—she’s an old-school cigarette person-the ones in the bag in the box on the shelf in the office that has not been sold. )

Having had a written, solid plan reflecting my mother’s wishes— to send her ashes off into the Pacific on the west side of Maui—I was eager to scatter Pop’s ashes and give him back to the world. I suggested Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz, and some other locations I knew were special to him. What I didn’t know was that the Elders wanted to intern the ashes in a grave my father  had already bought.

That grave was next to his first wife, not my mother, but Carla, Peggy Sue and Giacomo Junior’s mother. Why would we not want to put him there, you ask?

There have been rumors about my father around this Valley, for a long time. Rumors that made stranger’s on barstools eyes widen when he was mentioned. Rumors that made the Elders grow aggressive when mentioned, rumors that everyone in my family knew they were not supposed to repeat.  The Rumors were of a Very Bad Thing my father may have done, that made Peggy Sue, Carla, Giacomo Junior and me a united front (for a brief moment in time, before more shit hit more fans) in not wanting his ashes to be next to their mom.

After a few months of him being on the abandoned office shelf, creeping me out when I went to sell the antiques, I decided it would be far better for him to creep me out in the comfort of my own home, so I grabbed the box. I took him home and put him on a shelf next to my mother’s ashes while they awaited their trip to Hawaii.

I spent some time sitting with both of their remains, my mom in a beautiful vessel and my father in a crude box. I talked to them, yelled at them, cried because of them, cried for them, and said my goodbyes.

I would never stop wishing that they could have been the people I needed them to be, and now that they were dead, I couldn’t hold them accountable or tell them anymore, I could only yell and cry with the ashes.

It was enough, because it had to be.

I packed up my mom’s ashes and brought them to Maui. I was tempted to take Pop with us, sneak his ashes into the ceremony, but I honored the collective, united front that was built. I was in charge of Mom’s ashes and that was enough. So I found a Native Ceremonialist who did catamaran and canoe ash-scattering ceremonies. My husband, kids, and I said our beautiful pacific goodbye to Iz playing from the Native Ceremonialist’s white business partner’s phone. Now, said the shaman, you can go to visit her anywhere the Pacific Ocean touches.

It’s true. Every time I go to the beach out here on the West Coast; there she is.

• *

The united front between my siblings and myself lasted long enough to sell the property and split up the money. By that point, I had been re-inherited and monetarily put on par with Lacey.

I met up with Carla in a parking lot to give her some of the bank paperwork, and foisted the black box back onto her, when I knew she would have to take him home.

The connection between Carla, Peggy Sue, Giacomo Junior and me went from united to frayed and finally snapped between 2019 and 2023.

By this time last year, both Carla and Peggy Sue had long stopped communicating with me.  Jacky Junior and I enjoyed six years of a kind of friendship starting with my mom’s (his stepmom and adopted mom) demise in 2018 and ending with the Ash Fiasco.

Said Fiasco commenced when several years had passed and that I had not realized I didn’t know where  Pop’s ashes were. (How could you forget such a thing, you ask? I could be wrong but it could have something to do with my other two half siblings—my mom’s bio kids—trying to take me to court to get me removed as executor, holding a secret funeral, and then when that failed, ghosting me and leaving me with all the work. )

It bothered me that I had forgotten about Pop’s ashes, on the level that this was my ancestor and I felt somewhat…not entitled, but belonging to the process of sending him off. Properly. Like with my mom, which provided closure and healing.

I reached out to my brother about it ( He and I were still best buds, which mostly consisted of him telling me his problems and then cutting me off with platitudes when I talked about mine, but still! A sibling that loved me! I took what I got.) Jack had this  complex, shifty reaction about it, followed by plan forbidding me to talk to anyone else in the family about the ashes, to sit tight.

I heard him out, and was like, “I don’t know if I can do that, it sounds like triangulation” and he took that for a yes.

When I dug up the information myself, in half the time it took him, he was furious. He was furious I had appointed him to his self-appointed role of damage control.

But I was already wary of him; plus, that’s when I found out that everyone had gone behind my back. Carla and Peggy Sue  decided to Let The Elders Win and inter our father next to his first wife; the person they all united in saying they didn’t want him to be next to. Even though they still believed that the Very Bad Thing happened, they had all decided that it didn’t matter anymore, it was his wishes (“wtf happened to Science?” she asked, before the pandemic. Bwahahaha)

Most importantly, everyone said, he was dead anyway.  My brother said, “I’m really not happy that you did what we agreed that you would not do, but if you think about it, it’s better this way! It’s paid for and now we don’t have to worry about it! “

I told my brother, maybe you should worry about your fucking conscience.

Then he told me I was a condescending cow and ghosted me.

A week later, I got in the car accident. I sent Jacky photos of our totaled car and told him I’d been in the hospital, but I didn’t really hear much from him other than one reaction emoji and one platitude.

I’m getting ahead of myself again. Before the car crash, I went supernova. All of the pent-up rage I had felt towards each and every sibling that I had suppressed for fifty years exploded. I went off. On everyone. Scorched earth. Fuck them All.

I had finally toppled from the impossible perch of trying to be the bigger person, and letting it go, and talked back. With fire and a roar.

“What you resist, persists,” Jung wrote. Scorching the earth is a very hot fire and not really needed for garden-variety family squabbles, and definitely not recommended without safety equipment.

But it’s the only way the mighty Redwood can rebuild her forest.

And that’s when I finally started to grieve the loss of my siblings. On a gurney, hoping nothing was broken.

Right in the middle of my anger spiral, that’s when it hit me: not the realization, but the car—head on, at 40 miles per hour, piloted by a blackout-drunk with priors. The idea for this newsletter came to me while lying on that gurney, wondering how Jacky Junior would react to knowing he could have lost me, and if he would still harbor his grudge. I hoped he wouldn’t, but pretty much knew he would. Whenever something bad happened to me, he was quick to point out how he had endured worse.

I realized that between the scorched earth and the fact that they never really gave a shit to begin with, that not one of my five—oops! six! Sorry, Lacey—half siblings, actually loved me; or ever had.

And with that thought, I finally relaxed, realizing, I was not in control, and drifted off to as restful a sleep as one can get in the trauma unit of a county hospital.

To be continued.