My mother is sitting a few feet away from me right now. She’s also somewhere by her house, partly in West Virginia and some next to the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. My brother and sister also have some ashes as well.
I plan on doing the same thing for myself, getting a number of smaller urns and a couple of bigger ones as well so I can be spread out in a lot of different places.
The thought does not creep me out one bit.
Good place to put my first 2 cents on this board…
ahem…
I know someone who never got around to scattering the ashes of both his parents. It just so happens that the said parents were divorced acrimoniously years before. So what has he done? He’s got Ma sitting on top of Pa on the mantle. Knowing that Pa expressly stated that he didn’t want to be within 2 feet of that woman ever again…
Now that my friend is gone; his ashes will join the other 2 on the mantle. They’re in pretty nice boxes; not too big or obtrusive.
Myself I have urns of dead cats and dogs (Churchill, Bruno, ET, Ed, etc etc ) in the basement. I think I’ll take all those ashes combine them into one large batch, mix with some cement and make a nice ornament for the garden perhaps a cement sheep grazing. Maybe paint it black and shellac it and make a large Christmas Goose for by the door as a doorstop.
Same thing happened in my family. We held on to Pop’s ashes for a while, till the weather turned right to bury them where he wanted. So, for about three weeks, they sat, in a cardboard box, up in the loft, and we all did our best not to think about it.
I guess, if we had never quite gotten around to it, and they were up there still, it wouldn’t weigh much on our minds. “Out of sight,” etc. But every so often, when we were up cleaning, and we saw it, we’d be reminded, and I think it would irk a little.
I am so turned off by so much of our society’s reverence for the bodies of the deceased. It just seems like more worship of a body that was only the shell your loved one lived in. I am wondering if eventually getting some ashes back would make it easier to see my family on donating my body.
Once I’d been around a few dead loved ones, I realized that I find the containers of ashes comforting, so I’m fine with keeping them around. What creeps me out is leaving bodies in holes. That seems so lonesome and cold.
Not my case since so far there’s nobody in my family who’s been incinerated and no plans for it, but my brother’s father in law got incinerated; the plan was to spread his ashes in a beloved spot, in the company of his siblings and other relatives.
Three years after the funeral, it still hadn’t been possible to gather everybody at the same time, so my sister in law finally said “to hell with you all, I’m scattering the ashes next saturday, and anybody who isn’t there can go jump into the river.”
In the intervening three years, the urn was stored in a kitchen cupboard, not displayed. I understand they broke it after the scattering.
Chicken Fingers, my family’s grave is collective. We joke about Resurrection arriving and people waking up saying “damnit, get your elbow out of my ribs!”
My partner’s mother died several years ago and her ashes have been in a cupboard in our house since then waiting on my partner’s father joining her! Now they’re both in the cupboard awaiting a family get-together to scatter their combined ashes. As some of her family live in Greece, this may take some time before they feel they can afford a foreign trip…
My sister died recently, and she’s now in a different cupboard awaiting warmer weather for scattering her ashes.
Doesn’t bother either of of us at all.
I think it’s morbid, whether for people or pets.
I know a guy who wants his wife to have his ashes made into fake diamonds. She likes jewelry and likes making jewely, so the idea is she can wear him after death. I am still trying to decide if this is highly romantic or highly creepy.
I have my mom’s ashes in an urn out in the living room, because it was the most respectful thing to do. Without delving into too much drama, once my mom died my dad really wanted nothing more to do with her things and anything that reminded him of her, including her ashes.
I had plans to go out west at some point and spread her ashes with her father and my brother and sister, but that didn’t pan out, and for years her ashes sat in a shoebox in my linen closet.
It seemed so distasteful that I eventually put them in an urn in my living room. And for the record, I don’t find it one bit creepy.
My mum was on the mantelpiece for years. It’s likely my father ended up beside her. My brother lived in the house; I’m not sure where they are now! I presume my brother has the cremains.
Typo Knig has suggested we get a Pepe le Pew cookie jar for the purpose, so I guess I would keep it around :).
I have the ashes of two dogs and a cat in boxes on a shelf with the critters’ pics next to their respective boxes. Collars on top.
I don’t know if I’d keep human loved one’s ashes out in the middle of the living room on display (for more than a day or so), but I wouldn’t have any problem keeping an urn in my house… I don’t think.
My sister has requested that a bit of her ashes get mixed into some tattoo ink and her kids will get new tatts… with bits of her in the ink. I told her I thought that was such an awesome idea, I will also get a tatt with her ashes embedded in the ink.
I want my ashes rolled into joints after which my loved ones will be offered the opportunity to smoke me. While some loved ones are creeped out by this idea, others have agreed to it.
One person’s creep-out idea is another person’s great idea.
My deceased father in law’s girlfriend had him split into tupperware containers and given out to people at the funeral including my daughter who was 8 at the time. I was completely horrified. I immediately handed them to my husband and we scattered them in the lake by our house. To this day, I can’t believe anyone would do such a thing. But more, HOW did she do it? Just reach each container into the box and used it as a scoop? Shudder.
Your Tupperware lady… has the freshest ideas… for locking in… freshness.
I wondered if she measured equal amounts or just eyeballed it.
But seriously, handing over a tupperware container with ashes in it to an 8-year-old? :dubious: I’m not sure that’s creepy, but it does seem a bit inappropriate.
We do. We’ve got the remains of our son in our house, because we plan on retiring to Taiwan and we don’t want to leave the remains in Japan.
My dad kept an urn with Mom’s ashes by his bedside til the day he died. After that my sister and I tood a mid-winter vacation to Florida and scattered their ashes together in the ocean offshore from a beach they had enjoyed visiting together.
In both cases, in lieu of any kind of funeral we had a gathering of their friends at which songs were sung and stories told. This is what both my husband and I prefer, as opposed to the incredibly massive and (IMHO) mawkish and expensive affair that had to be done for my MIL. You can get a quite inexpensive immediate cremation and packaging of the remains in a plain box. I’d not want my family to spend one dime more than required for disposal of whatever’s left of my body after I’m no longer using it.
I would be in favor of the medical school donation myself, but my husband finds THAT to be creepy, and is convinced that a bunch of med school students would be laughing it up and using his sternum as a coffee-holder or some such thing, although I’ve told him I really don’t think that happens.
We put my father’s ashes in the trunk of Mom’s car and drove off to a park near our childhood home to bury him. Now, Mom also kept a bag of Kitty Litter in the trunk to help her out of the ice (it’s better than salt!), and if you have ever seen cremains . . . Well, my sister and I are 80% sure we buried Dad and not the Kitty Litter.
Mom: “Well, if not, it’ll be the first time your father ever helps me get the car out of the ice.”
I think I still have a baggie of ashes from my Dad in my sock drawer. I’ll check tonight.
I had my first husband’s ashes in a box on the piano for a while. Eventually, his ashes and the ashes of all of our cats that predeceased him were put into a floating urn and set afloat on the lake where he liked to fish. But while the ashes were on the piano, it didn’t bother me other than knowing I had to do something about it eventually.