- My dad died when I was 28 years old, 10 years ago.
- I wasn't close to my dad, but when I got the call that he was dead, I chose to keep his ashes.
After my father died in a fire at his home when I was 28, I became next of kin and the keeper of his urn. Only not because I wanted to be, or expected ever to be, but because I had been the one who had stayed in his life the longest, and it seemed to be the right thing to do.
After I received the sheriff's call, with my overwhelming grief and shock, I couldn't imagine planning a funeral. I wasn't close to his family, I did not know the people in his circle. He had finally been living a calmer life. We were talking more often on the phone, he was sober and had a pep in his voice when we talked.
I decided I wanted him with me.
His remains sat on my coffee table
A few days later, I flew to my hometown of Syracuse, NY. I decided I would pick up the urn after picking up newspapers with my father's obituary and visiting his home to see if there was anything to salvage. In his car, I found a handful of keepsakes, a jacket, a thermos, and other everyday items, which I placed in my carry-on duffle bag. Then went to the funeral home to collect his urn.
I was surprised to see it facing me on the desk at the funeral home. My father was just 63 years old, and now I was holding all that was left of him. I wrapped my arms around the urn, it made me wish I could call him instead of placing his urn into a canvas bag and bringing it to the airport.
In my apartment in lower Manhattan, I placed my father's urn on the coffee table. Every night I would place my hand on it as though I was patting my father's shoulder to say goodnight.
The urn moved with me
When my spouse and I moved to Murray Hill that same year, it benefited my grief. Leaving the doorway where I received the call from the sheriff, leaving the place where my grief began made me feel a little lighter.
The urn was in my lap in a taxi, then 27 floors up, to rest on the coffee table again, only now facing the East River.
When I found out I was pregnant, I excitedly shared the news with my mother, and I wrote a note to my father in my journal about the pregnancy tests and how I wished I could call him too. I named my son Phoenix in memory of the town in Central New York where my father died. I would place my infant son's hand on the urn and tell him, "your grandfather is always with you."
I moved the urn to my son's bedroom among trains and trucks right before he soared into toddlerhood. I imagined the urn on the little bookshelf was just a wooden box to his eyes. I would ask my father to watch over me while I experienced ectopic pregnancy loss, but almost a year later, I would wonder about fate, timing, and if things do happen for a reason, and glance at the urn while rocking my newborn daughter.
Pushing the double stroller would carry my grief through the next two years, and every night while I read to my children or sang a lullaby, I would pat the top of the urn, and maybe it sounds crazy, but to me, it was as though my father had not missed a beat.
I moved him away from New York with a little reluctancy
I knew my father disliked the heat when I carried him again as my carry-on bag and flew to Texas with my family. I didn't want to let go of where I was from, where my father had lived and died. I placed the urn in the sunny kitchen of the huge rental home, on the shelf over a built-in office desk where I would drink coffee. The urn was a piece of my roots, a reminder of what I left behind and how far I was from the familiar.
There would be one more home, one more counter, before I carried the urn up two flights of stairs to my new apartment as a single mom. I wanted the urn to be one of the first things I placed inside.
When my kids ask what's inside the urn and why it sits in the living room, I tell them it's their grandfather's ashes, and with us is where it belongs. I've thought about scattering his ashes at the lake in my hometown or at the track I ran on with my father when I was young, or maybe outside the library where our last photo was taken together.
I have debated about if I made the right choice to have his urn live with us, but it's been over 10 years and I have no plans to let his ashes go.