Since They Burned You Up, Collect You in a Cup

My sister organized a small memorial for her dead husband today, with six of their friends invited. He had wanted to have his ashes scattered in the Ten Mile River behind their house, so we all gathered on the mossy-rock bank with his very heavy bag of ashes. A few people spoke. We took turns dumping some of the thick grey ashes into the water. They responded more like grey paint than ash, and swirled and turned like clouds in the clear river water. The currents would eventually clear his remains as they diffused more and more downstream, and then another cloud of grey swirling ash would be added by another person in attendance. 

As his ashes were dropped into the black and clear, cold, rushing water, my sister shed the first tears I have seen, since I arrived here a week ago. I put my arm around her from the right side, and a friend of hers, from the left. I was surprised by how thin and frail her scapula and shoulder felt. 

We saved a small amount of his ashes at my sister's request. 

There are ashes split through collective guilt
People rest at sea forever
Since they burnt you up
Collect you in a cup
For you the coal black sea has no terror

Will your ashes float like some foreign boat
Or will they sink absorbed forever?
Will the Atlantic coast
Have its final boast?
Nothing else contained you ever



Very few words were spoken. The restaurant owner of the place across the highway had us all over there, and fed us. There were lots of stories from his friends, who had known him for 20 years or more. 

My sister's husband had been the kind of person you would describe as "intense," and someone most people either loved or hated. One of his oldest friends told the story of how they had a falling out that resulted in 15 years of complete silence between the two of them. The last words my sister's husband had said in the fight the two of them had were "We're friends to the end. And this is the end." But after the 15 year silence, they reconnected, and reconciled, and had been friends for the past decade or so. 

I had a great many memories of the man today. I first met him in 2003, when I drove out to New York for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, which my sister had generously offered to host on her large rural property. He had serious liver disease and was not doing very well, but he was high energy, constantly in motion, working his ass off to get the property ready for the big party. He and I cleared a bunch of rocks for a large portion of the grassy lawn along the river, and set up a volleyball court that never got used. He had unkind words about my oldest brother, laying into him as a freeloader and a grifter. He was fiercely protective of my sister. I immediately knew his type from many years of manual labor on the east coast, in the New York, Philadelphia, and Boston areas. Blustering, gruff, hands on, practical, handy, but with nearly zero patience for pretense or laziness, and a deep and abiding complete self-confidence in his opinions and judgments. 

He also was extremely irascible, and very sharp and sudden in forming his opinions and never hesitant in expressing them. A few years later, when he found out I had gotten sober and was in 12 step recovery, he said something like "Oh so you joined the cult huh? That's for weaklings. Just don't drink if you have a problem with it. AA is bullshit." My sister shushed him, since she knew how much my recovery meant to me, but honestly, it didn't bug me. I figured, well, that's your opinion, and who knows where it comes from? I often run into people who hate AA. I'm not really a joiner myself, and I don't need to defend AA to people who think it's bullshit.

He discounted all of my "book learning" and dismissed the Ph.D. as a total waste of time. "That and $5'll get you a shitty coffee at Starbucks!" For some reason, I never felt too stung by these sudden blustering and dismissive remarks. I think, at least in part, that was because I knew what he valued, how he had lived his life, and what kind of work he thought was important, and his opinions were totally consistent with all of that. I also didn't have to form any kind of actual relationship with him, and valued how protective he was of my sister, and figured that was enough. I didn't need his respect. I'm also used to being dismissed by a lot of men, who are all pretty much fucking assholes anyway, and he fit a larger pattern, so it wasn't surprising. But with guys like him, you also know flat out that he would give you the very shirt off his back if you needed it. 

If you know any Navy lore, you know that some of the craziest motherfuckers of all were the boiler room techs. This is what my sister's husband did, when he was in the Navy. Hard mechanical labor with high stakes in cramped and incredibly hot quarters. He was proud of having done it, but he also was dismissive of the Navy and not particularly patriotic. He had the true enlisted man's attitude about all of it, which was that the enlisted men were the only ones with any sense, the officers were all idiots, and the military in general was a goddamned joke. 

Anyway, all of that bluff and bluster is just ash and memory now. What was left of him from the crematorium formed clouds and grey swirls in the Ten Mile River. "Fuck a funeral or some kind of big ceremony," he had said to me once," when I go, I want to be fish food. It's in my will. Just throw my ashes into the river."

And so, he got what he wanted.