I’ve got two stories, well, actually three. (Four, if you consider my pets, but we don’t need to go into that now)
(1) This is the funniest story, IMHO.
Way back when, my first Internet playground was AOL. I belonged to an area of AOL for writers, called “The Amazing Instant Novelist.” I started out as a chat host in the Instant Cafe, and eventually weaseled my way into the Humor Department.
In Real Life, one “adventure” Mr VOW and I suffered through was owning rentals. Oh, the war stories we have about being landlords!
One of our renters moved in with her two kids, and for various reasons she ended up going to Bakersfield to live with her mom. She left the house with a nightmare full of “stuff,” and of course the place desperately needed cleaning. I hired a cleaning team to come in and shovel the place out, and make it fit for habitation.
The owner of the cleaning service called me, and said they found something, what did I want to do? Seems the lady left her husband behind. He was dead, of course.
I went over to the house, and the cleaning team had put the box with his cremains in a plastic trash bag, and set it in the driveway. The box had tipped over, so Dead Husband had lost a little weight. I didn’t feel right setting him out to the curb on trash day, so I took him home with me.
The lady never got in touch with me, and she left no contact information. Dead Guy sat on a shelf in my garage for years.
I mentioned the crazy (and slightly macabre) story to the manager of the Humor Department of the area where I worked in AOL. He was a hilarious character. He said, “We need to have a contest! Best use for a Dead Guy’s ashes. Winner gets: the Dead Guy’s ashes!”
Oh. My. God!!!
Most of the entries began, “If the guy liked to do…” I never knew the guy. I had no idea what he liked or disliked. A good portion suggested using him for fertilizer. One suggested mixing him with the powder used to mark lines on athletic fields. And we all laughed long and hard when someone said, “Fill an empty wine bottle with the ashes, then turn the bottle into a lamp. He can stay half-lit all the time!”
My favorite was to send him to Africa and make MREs for cannibals.
I forget who “won” the contest. We never received contact information from the winner, so the ashes went back into my garage. A friend of my sister decided to take responsibility for him. She researched his name, and never really located any family. So she took him to Lake Tahoe, where her family had a huge gathering for Thanksgiving. He had a place at their table, and they included him in their conversations. After the meal, the family took the ashes out and scattered them over the lake.
(2) Personal story. Both my parents decided to be cremated. Daddy had retired after twenty years in the Air Force, so we always knew where their final resting place would be. When Momma died, Daddy said either my sister or I should pick her up from the funeral home, and keep the box with her in it. He did not want the responsibility for it. Then, after he passed away, we could have one memorial service for the two of them, and have them placed together in the columbarium at the National Cemetery. Mr VOW and I made all the arrangements at the funeral home for Momma. At that time (1998), California had determined that cremains were not to be considered as something to be discarded as an afterthought. Preparing and placing a person in a casket, or cremating someone and depositing the cremains in a box or urn, the handling mortuary prepared a form. Whatever the final disposition, the form needed to be presented at the cemetery in order to beburied or inurned. I don’t know the details for scattering, except formal permission was necessary, and the form was needed for that. When Mr VOW and I picked up Momma, I told the funeral director to place the form inside the little velvet bag holding the box of cremains.
Daddy died ten years and one month after Momma. When Mr VOW and I went to the same mortuary to make arrangements for Daddy, we brought along Momma, for they were now together again. The director asked for Momma’s form, and I said it was in the bag with her. The director was very grateful, because regenerating that form was a gigantic pain in the butt.
Daddy had a military funeral with full honors. The ceremony was very touching.
A few weeks went by, and Mr VOW and I went to the cemetery to visit Momma and Daddy. I was taking deep breaths to settle myself, so I wouldn’t break down and cry when I saw their names on the marker.
No, I didn’t cry. I yelled. I swore.
Daddy joined the Army Air Corp during World War Two. He stayed in the military, in what became the US Air Force. When he stopped flying, the AF sent him to IBM, to be trained in those new-fangled things, computers. By the time he retired in 1963, he was working on the launch computers at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Well, that’s what we THOUGHT he did. The marker at the National Cemetery had his name correct, and his rank, then said “WW2. KOREA. VIETNAM.”
And “US ARMY.”
WHAT?
It was fixed. And somewhere, Momma and Daddy were laughing!
(Note to @Beckdawrek : see what I mean about the Whammy?)
(3) Mr VOW and I have given some thought to the future. When we first moved out to our property in AZ, we stayed in a dinky little travel trailer. One morning, the County Assessor knocked on our door and asked Mr VOW where the house was.
The two of them talked for a bit, and Mr VOW explained we were still in the “works in progress” stage. Mr VOW also mentioned this would be our last home, and he expected to be buried on this land. The Assessor said, “Yeah, you could do that.”
He had never mentioned that to me. I thought about it, and I rather liked the idea. I’m not too crazy about the idea of cremation, so I figured we could be placed in a hole, cover it up, problem solved. A bit more thinking, and I realized we’d need at least a concrete grave liner. Having grandchildren tripping over large hollows where the ground settled is rather tacky. Plus damn near all the wildlife out here DIGS. With that settled in my mind, I looked to the legal requirements. To dedicate part of our 36 acres to a family cemetery, we need the entire cemetery land to be surveyed, and then a parcel map drafted, filed, and accepted by the county. I’ve done enough engineering and drafting in my life, and this is something that would require a couple thousand, if not more. Plus it would take quite a bit of time. If someone is getting close to breathing his last, you don’t start looking up private surveyors in Yelp and ask if they map private cemeteries.
Mr VOW and I talked it over. I said while we could do that, I don’t see the expense of a private cemetery as “improving” the property. In fact,the cemetery could very well reduce the value, because people may not be interested in buying land with dead people interred. Our goal is to leave the property to our kids. They both love the area almost as much as we do. Ideally, we’d want them to keep the land, use it for a vacation home, or perhaps even retire there. We realize, though, that you never know what great big pile of problems will dump on you next. And we give them the property (which I hope to have paid off in a few years) with no strings–if they need the money, sell it and split it between the two of them.
Many apologies to any who fell asleep reading that. Go get another cup of coffee, and sieze the day!
~VOW
