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QUANDRY
17 April 2013, 09:13
This is Ken. Well. What’s left of him on this mortal plane.
Way back when, for eleven years, he was known to all as Whats-His-Face – the significant other, until life changing events put me on the path I am now. Back then, the future was a lot less clear to me than it is now. I had seen a far more limited future for me than what was reality – I clung to things for meaning, for comfort for reminders, for etc., odd things like his old wallet and driver’s license.
For the last five years, I slowly reshaped life, and made memories more important than possessions – mainly, because I lost EVERYTHING, so memories are all that I had. Most of what I had in 2007 is gone. Yearbooks, clothes, cars, houses, dogs (sad), weight, etc. And from the even of his death, I have a box of momentos with sympathy cards and such. And this. A box of ashes. When he died, I got half his ashes. The other half went to his sister to be entombed with his mother’s ashes.
And for five years, been hanging on to them. The last two of which he’s been in the trunk of the car.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. I hold him in my memory and what he was will always be a part of me. And I have the memory box the folks at Viega gave me. So the ashes now, are just that. ASHES. They are not him, do not encompass him, do not make up any part that he was. They aren’t even his earthly shell. So the sentiment becomes now attached to the memories, and not the actual physical manifestation of the ashes. And I’m feeling pretty bad that he has to be in the trunk (or now in a box hidden in the house). I would take him out, and shine up the box and display it, but Doug, the current S.O., (or as he’s going to be called from now on [REDACTED] because of his reluctance to be public in anything he can’t wholly control), finds it creepy and doesn’t want a dead person in the house or in the trunk etc. He’s gotten better about it, joking that when he goes, I’m just going to have both of them in the trunk and they’ll have conversations about me, but I know he really hates having a box of a dead person around. And I’m guessing if Ken were alive, he’d be just as pissed that I’ve clung to the ashes, and now carry them about.
All that being said, I am at a point where I can let it go – the ashes carry no meaningfulness other than that he once had some of that material in him. It’s better to have memories than this so I don’t have to have it around anymore, and it bothers the living to the point where if I were going to keep them, I can’t keep them in a nice case displayed in the house or a back room or something less disrespectful than a cardboard computer box. I, already have to have the dogs’ ashes kind of hidden away (because I am NOT going to get rid of those), so I have a quandry.
What am I going to do with Ken? I tried contacting Paul back home, who was Ken’s best friend and mentor, about giving them back to his family, and I got no response. I don’t have any of his family’s contact information. I don’t even know his sister’s last name anymore. And I don’t want to just chuck them into the bin, I think that would be a hell of a disrespectful thing to do, plus it would probably heap a buttload of bad juju on me that I don’t really need. So I’m not sure what to do.
I guess he could stay where he is for a while, but that would just probably put me on the road to being that lady riding around with a trunk full of loved ones, and I think that is much more disturbing than being the crazy old cat lady, or the hoarder who has a poop pile three foot high in her toliet because her water is cut off and she’s a whack job.
I am at the point where I am going to scatter the ashes, but I haven’t a clue as to where. I don’t know the places he found meaningful and the ones that I can assume that may hold some significance to him are 1,400 miles away. I was thinking of doing it in the ocean. He liked the ocean I think – everybody likes the ocean, I mean, come on. He liked Florida – he took a vacation down there the last year he was alive to do some snail poaching. [REDACTED] says we can take a trip down to Florida and do the thing – he’s from Florida and we’d have reason to go down there.
So I’m thinking we can do that, but I’m a little befuddled as to how. Do I try to pry the box open? It’s sealed up tight and looks like it would fight back should I try to mess with it. I don’t want to chuck the whole thing in the water, although now that I think about it, that might be the best solution. Fumbling with it, would turn the whole event into a Three Stooges episode and that’s not a great way to go.
I’m out of ideas. And even pondering this, its smacks of an unseemlyness that is unsettling, but I have to do something. He may start to rust. He’s already starting to tarnish and the box is cheap so the gold paint (I guess its paint) has worn off in places. If anybody has any ideas, I’d be glad to entertain them.
I just can’t keep him in the trunk anymore.
