I read a book recently, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, an autobiographical book about the author’s time working as a young adult in a Crematory, which led her to find a career in the field of death. I don’t think I could have read it a year ago, but now that it’s been 16 months since Sara’s death (and over 1.5 years since George’s delivery), I was okay with it. In a way, I found it comforting – having a better understanding of what happened to Sara after I saw her for the last time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Sara’s ashes, which are still sitting in the beautiful urn I ordered – a dark brown box, her picture showing out of a heart-shaped cut-out in the front, with the expected information engraved to the right of her picture. I wonder what it would feel like to run my hands through the tiny bits of ash and bone. It is physically all that is left of her, sanitized by fire. It feels inconceivable that a person as amazing as Sara has been reduced to such a small container. George’s ashes take up less space than an ice cube, this tiny bit of matter within a small (but still much bigger than we needed) urn.
I now find myself living this life, where the two most important people to me are sitting in their respective urns next to each other on the side table in the living room. I dread the conversational – “So are you married” or “Do you have kids”? I imagine the flash of pity or awkwardness if I were to answer in the overly-honest way I instinctually want to: Yes, I’m married, but my wife is dead and her ashes reside in a beautiful box in the living room next to the urn for our stillborn son.
I don’t think I would ever actually say that to someone, but even the socially acceptable answer that I’m widowed elicits awkwardness – people don’t expect to encounter tragedy in their casual conversations. Right now, I don’t even have the saving grace of anything resembling a happy ending to offer up to people to soften my story. People don’t mind hearing about tragedy when there’s a rainbow at the end…
I don’t quite know how to end this. I’m getting tired, and all I can think about are the ashes in our living room, the ash and bone of the two most important people in the world to me. So for tonight, I’ll go to bed and stop by the table where Sara and George rest, and bid them goodnight.