My mother was estranged from her parents since she married my father in 1959 (actually, her parents disowned her for marrying my dad). Anyway…fast forward +40 years to 1999…her mom dies. Her dad contacts her to kiss and make up because he’s old and frail and needs someone to take care of him. My mom does her “Christian duty”, forgives the old coot and does what she can to help him (without falling back into a dysfunctional relationship with him–good for her!)
Her dad eventually has to go into a nursing home. She puts boxes upon boxes of her parents’ STUFF in storage in order to get their house ready for sale. Just before Thanksgiving in '01, her dad dies. He had named my mom executrix of his will and she settles the estate. Every year, she goes through a box or two of the STUFF to see if any of it is needed/important or can be disposed of/ recycled/ donated/ given away, etc. Most of it is fripperies and old TV Guides, Reader’s Digests, and the like.
Back in October of '63, my mom’s brother, “E”, was in a bad car wreck, separated from the military, and died a few months later (July '64) of a brain tumor. My mom, with three small children and no money at the time, was unable to attend the funeral. My mom’s younger sister, recently married and with a small child, had also been unable to attend, but she let my mom know that their parents told her E had been buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Several years ago, my mom and her sister got into genealogy. They tried to locate their brother’s burial plot at Arlington. There was no record of him having been interred anywhere at Arlington. No remains, no cremains, no marker, no memorial–nada, nulo, niente, nuthin’.
In June of '05, I was visiting my mom and she asked me to move one of her dad’s boxes from by the window–the box on which the old cat loved to snooze in the sunlight–to next to her big chair where mom could open the box and peruse the contents.
It was mostly full of papers–carbon copies of typewritten letters. Letters her dad had written in the months following E’s death to E’s attending physician, asking–pleading–for the physician’s help in making a case to the military that E’s death was a result of injuries sustained in the car accident and that, as E had been active-duty at the time of the wreck, the military should cover the costs of E’s hospitalization, his home health aide, and the cost of disposing of his body. The military had turned down my grandfather’s request at least twice. (I won’t give the reason why as that would be painful for my family to have it posted to an open forum. Sorry.) My grandparents were in serious debt for many years because they had to cover all these costs.
The box also contained books, papers, and mementos from E’s military service, including his dog tags. As my mom read through her dad’s letters, she held her hand in front of her mouth, choking back sobs. The hospitalization records indicated that her brother had died of an aneurysm. While my mom was reading the letters and the hospital reports, I poked around a little in the box. My eyes fell on a cardboard box, slightly larger than a brick, wrapped in plastic wrap and bound with thick, dried out rubber bands around each end. I had seen other boxes like that one and was pretty sure I knew what was in it.
I gently caught my mother’s attention and pointed out the smaller box. “Do you think what I think is in that box?” I asked. She studied the box for several long seconds, then looked at me with wide eyes. The mystery of where her brother had been “laid to rest” was solved.
My uncle’s cremains and effects are now with my aunt. She was close to him and derives some comfort from having his effects nearby.