Now don’t get up tight. This personal essay is not macabre. It’s only my musing on the subject of “ashes”; a subject that I’ve had personal experience with. Perhaps, you too have dealt with the subject when a loved one, relative or friend passes away, and you are left holding the vessel, with his or her ashes so ensconced. Even if you have not had lived through such an experience, you come into contact with it by reading along here, as I tell you what happened when I found myself wondering: What do I do with the ashes?

My mother and other members of the Rose clan rest in a family plot in Kew Gardens, Long Island. My father, Reggie, gave me all the information about the burial arrangements he made after Mother died in Florida, and how her remains he ordered to the Rose site in Kew Gardens. Pretty enough place, but not a place that I would go to other than on family business. Reggie told me that the grave for Mother could hold two, as he had it arranged so he could be buried with her: All of this took place before he came to live with me and my wife in Maine.

After four years with us we found it necessary to find a place for him other than our Maine home. We did find a suitable place in San Miguel, Mexico and my wife brought Reggie, the aging family Labrador dog, his 21” TV, and personal baggage to settle him in 1989 at his new home in Mexico. Well, I won’t go into the trip and how that unfolded, but I could. You can read about that time in my memoir My Father’s Room—if you like.

Four years later he died, at the age of 92; this was when we were in the USA. We got a call from the lady who we hired to care for Reggie, in her home; because he became too much of a care issue when he was alone in our San Miguel house, as we were “snow birds.” As it is in Mexico, you burial takes place within twenty-four hours. What to do: bury him in Mexico, ship his remains to Kew Gardens or have him cremated and deal with his ashes later, when I went to Mexico that winter, with my wife. I decided on cremation, with the idea that his ashes will be available and figure out the next steps later. I answered the question by cremation. Reggie didn’t say: I want to have my “bones” buried with Nellie, in the Rose plot in Kew Gardens; I don’t want my corpse cremated. (In fact, he and I never discussed anything personal.) But, I figured cremation was the way to go and I could bury his ashes when I went to New York City, in a year or so. Just keep the ashes and when you fly back, I told myself, take the ashes in the urn with you, and go to Kew Gardens and get things done, or arrange with the officials at the cemetery to do the job.

The next year I was back in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and the lady who cared for Reggie transferred his ashes to me. The ashes were in a brass coated urn, less than a foot in length. Nothing lavish and suggesting no problem. Simply take the urn on the plane when I return to Maine, then go to New York—do what is necessary. At the customs, on my return flight, I was asked about the “urn”; so I said, “It contains my father’s ashes”; the older man at Mexican customs, crossed himself and closed the bag. I moved on and the ashes came to rest in Maine to wait the time that I was able to complete the delivery of Reggie to Nellie’s grave site.

Before I left with his ashes I found myself, for some unexplained reason, taking some of his ashes from the urn, and putting them in a ceramic vase, not especially a good piece of pottery but adequate. I used a wine cork to close the neck of the ceramic vessel; and from one of his mailing envelopes from his earlier residence in Hollywood, Florida, (I cut off his return address); and wrapped this around the cork with a rubber band. I thought as I used the rubber band, that Reggie would approve of this, as he often had a stack of rubber bands in a desk drawer in our home in Queens. He used the rubber bands to wrap the race track tickets that he bought, all losers, you know. He worked as a ticket clerk at the Belmont Track—his second job, he was a Passenger Representative at the New York Central Railroad. He loved to gamble; he was a loser! This fault of his, to gamble away everything, regardless of the consequences, made for many difficulties in my youthful days and early days at college. He finally got in so deep that he lost his job and Mother went off to Hawaii to care for my brother’s wife. You can follow this thread in my memoir.

Where was I? Oh the ashes, I had placed in the ceramic vessel. I didn’t have any warm and cozy feelings for Reggie. In fact, I unfold in my memoir my dislike for him and why. So, why did I put some of his ashes in the vessel and leave it in his room in our Mexican house, Casa Blanca? Better see a shrink, as I don’t know why.

His ashes in Maine finally got to Nellie’s grave site as a year or so later we were back in Maine and left later for a New York vacation; I carried the ashes in my backpack, along with a trowel that I anticipated using to dig a hole at her gravesite: my plan was to leave his ashes in their joint grave site. Didn’t work! The earth was very firm; I needed a jack hammer. I was unable to bury his ashes down far enough. I gave up and spread his ashes on top of her soil and I hurried away from the Rose plot.

My wife sought divorce in 2006, and after the haggle of that event I was able to get a divorce agreement whereby I got some payments and she got Casa Blanca. Four years after she filed for divorce she ordered me out of the house—for good. Ah, you get it now, what was I to do with the ashes? His ashes:leave these in Mexico, take them back to Maine and then get them to New York. Or, dump them in the toilet; it’s over, move on!

Easy questions to ask yourself but hard ones to answer.

I didn’t want to leave his ashes in the ceramic vessel for my ex to look after: more precisely, wonder what the hell to do with them. I figured I had several options. One, dispose of the ashes in the garden or in one of the Mexican flower pots in the patio in my father’s former room; or, two, take the ashes back to Maine and then when I went to New York sometime later, bury the ashes once again at my Mother’s gravesite. Dumping them in the toilet was not an option!

I was packing for departure during this question and answer period. In a few weeks I was leaving Casa Blanca for good. I first packed the vessel along with my personal records that I was to transport to Maine in my twenty-year old Ford Taurus station wagon. I changed my mind, I unpacked the vessel. I looked to the garden as a site but felt that he wouldn’t appreciate that. He didn’t like shared space, a loner by nature. The Talavara flower pots in the private patio space, available by a patio door, might be a suitable resting place; but then I remembered, he never, to my knowledge, used that space for his personal pleasure. In the living-dining room space a large Mexican Talavara flower-pot rested on a hand-wrought iron stand; it graced the entranceway door, and it was directly in front of a window that looked out to the striking garden court-yard. I decided that this was a good permanent place. So with trowel in hand, I dug a small hole, as there was little of his ashes in the vessel; and along with the cork, a rubber band around his old mailing address in Florida, said farewell to Reggie.

It tickled me that the Talavarar pot Reggie was now buried in had a plant in it I placed there a year before. It’s a ‘Wandering Jew”, Tradescantia zebrina: it’s originally from eastern Mexico. There are many bible related stories about the “Wandering Jew.”

Why was I so “tickled?” Reggie was not religious nor am I. Until I was thirty I had no knowledge about my family background on my grandfather’s side. My family, and Reggie’s brothers, Merrill and Lyle, also kept secret that my great-grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Germany, pre civil-war years (he served with distinction in the service of the North); and was Jewish; his wife, too. Our family name was Rosenberg. Grandfather Alexander Rosenberg changed the name but never filed legal papers. I uncovered this anomaly while writing my memoir My Father’s Room. I grew up a Christian, brother Robert, too, and so were my cousins, Audrey Dorothy, Edith and Billy. The Rose family hid the fact from public view, feeling in those days that it was best as a Christian than a Jew. Chasing this issue in my personal history and leaving some of Reggie’s ashes in his Casa Blanca home in a flower-pot that has the plant “Wandering Jew” seems to me justified and have real meaning.

It seems that the “Wandering Jew” plant is everywhere and it may hold the story of Jews as “immortal wanders” at its root. It does raise the question: does anyone actually finally find their resting place? By disposing of his ashes I am free of feeling responsible for his final resting place; yet somehow I couldn’t explain why I preserved the vessel his ashes once held. Why cart this poorly designed and executed vessel with me on my new adventure, planned for Maine; and have it at my painting studio? I sensed that I was once again to act inappropriately and with remorse, and carry quilt as to the manner in which I had disposed of his remains.

I was returning to the question: what do I do with the ashes? I apparently merely replaced “ashes” with “vessel”; that latter contained his ashes? Maybe, it was that I saw my death as eliciting a similar question for my heirs. I didn’t express exactly what I wanted done with my remains. I must put this issue to rest, finally answering: what I want to do with his “vessel” and the few grams of his “ashes” that rest at its base.

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