Moving Mom

When my Mother passed away she was cremated. My father did not bury her ashes. He wanted them in beautiful urn and he wanted to keep them in his room. It sounds sweet. He moved in with us and his new room was mine and hubby’s former room. He moved Mom into his new room. He also hung her picture above her ashes. Every night he would cover the urn with one of his sweaters. It was sweet in a we spent 50 years together and we are still together kind of way. He needed a room of his own and I needed my room back so while his room was being built he went to stay with my sister. The problem is that he didn’t take Mom with him to visit Sis. He decided that Mom would not travel well. This assumption was built on Mom’s previous travel history. She had been on a plane only a few times and was not fond of it. The thought of putting Mom in the cargo hold did not bode well with him. He was afraid that she would get lost. I can just picture my sister going to the airport to get him and the two of them at the luggage carousel only to be told that Mom didn’t make it off the plane and is now headed to Chicago. He also did not want to ship her via a private service. “Things happen on those flights to you know. Did you ever see the movie Cast Away?” Well there is just no arguing that point with him. I can’t count the number of times that a private carrier has gone down in the ocean and lost all of the packages on board except for a basketball and one other package. The number is too overwhelming. Needless to say, Mom stayed put while Dad went on his travels.

We moved back into our room. While I missed Dad, I was so happy to be back in my room and to sleep in my own bed that I was just beside myself. Then I looked up and saw Mom’s picture staring back at me. And it’s not one of those little 3 by 5 pictures. No this is the industrial strength portrait size 20 by 20. It’s a picture of Mom when she was twenty years old before they were married. Right next to her industrial strength portrait is a montage of pictures of Mom and all of Dad’s other relatives who are also dead. It’s sort of a gallery of dead people. Now I understand the need to have photos of your loved ones in your home. I have them all over my house. Some of the people are alive and some are not. However when they are directly above the urn with remains in it they take on a whole new meaning.

My son and I were putting my room back together. I had made the bed and dusted everything. The last thing that remained was the gallery of dead people and Mom. I didn’t want to take the pictures down. That seems awfully disrespectful because I wouldn’t be hanging them up anywhere else until Dad’s room was ready. They would be stacked in a corner somewhere. I wasn’t comfortable with stacking the gallery of dead folks in a corner so I did the only thing I could do. I put a towel over them. I don’t want to be looking at my Mom’s face after hubby and I are done doing what we love to do in the privacy of our room. That just says pew on so many levels. Once I had covered the pictures the only thing left do was figure out what to do with Mom. I thought of putting her in the closet but in the universe where karma exists putting your dead mother’s ashes in a closet just seems like you would be asking the universe to clobber you in the head. I am thinking maybe I will just put the urn on the floor between the dressers. It would be sort of an out of sight out of mind thing. Again, the whole concept of putting your Mom on the floor just screams universe please mess with me so I decided against that. Ditto for throwing a towel over the urn. I was quite frankly running out of options. I could put the ashes on the shelf in my living room but that would sort of make my dead Mother the focal point of my living room. I have never seen that on an HGTV show and I am not quite progressive enough to walk past my dead Mother everyday on my way in or out of my living room.

After much thought including the ramifications of the universe I decided to leave Mom just where she was and to not look. Yes, that's right, denial. Generations of people have built lives on denial and I was joining the club. I would just pretend that this beautiful urn did not contain the remains of my Mother. It was just a beautiful vase. It worked for a while. Right until I dusted my room. Dad would wrap it in his sweater so the urn never got dusty. Well I was not wrapping the urn with a sweater. To do so would go against my whole mantra of denial leaving me no choice but to dust it. My son suggested that perhaps if I didn’t call it Mom, dusting it might be a tad easier. I can go with that. I must admit calling the urn Mom puts you in a certain frame of mind. I normally dust with a small vacuum using the attachment. It gets all of the dust and leaves no streaks. I am poised with the vacuum in hand and I am picturing Mom being sucked into the vacuum and me having to explain to my Dad how I just vacuumed up Mom, the vacuum being haunted because Mom would come back just to have some fun with me because I accidentally vacuumed her up. I know in my rational brain that this can’t happen. Mom’s ashes are in a bag in the urn or so the funeral director told me. No, I have not looked. Mom in a bag just doesn’t work for me. It also can’t happen because I would have to take the lid off of the urn and stick the attachment in the urn to vacuum it. I know these things to be true but I am taking no chances. I put the vacuum away. A little dust won’t hurt. When Dad’s room is complete the first thing we put in the room is Mom. She is on an end table with the pictures of dead people surrounding her. My son reminds me that I had better learn how to dust Mom. I am taking the cowardly way out. I wrap her in Dad’s sweater. At least now she will be dust free and warm.