Ashes to Ashes.....

Well I made it back from the east coast of Canada feeling a bit more at peace with the world. It was an emotional trip for the family, but we made the best of it under the circumstances. My uncle took care of all the arrangements at the church and the cemetery. He is actually in charge of the cemetery, having spent a fair bit of time having to verify plots and corresponding names on the stones. Seems there were some discrepancies with some of the measurements a while back. He mentioned to me that they had a burial that prompted the assessment when they nicked the edge of a coffin in the ground where there wasn’t supposed to be one. Oops! All is well now and everyone has been accounted for.
We filed into the front pew in the church and I noticed a small back box on a table beside my dad’s urn of ashes and all kinds of thoughts started racing through my mind. I turned to my sister and asked her what she thought was up with the black box. She had no idea. My thoughts kept wandering throughout the whole mass…did ‘they’ put my dad in this box? ….did they want ‘us’ to put my dad in this box? Then in the midst of the sermon the priest acknowledged my father and then some other guy! What the heck? Now I felt kind of bad for the other guy. The whole mass was scripted around my dad and all of our family. We knew nothing at this point of this other man or his family, but at least I knew we didn’t have to tamper with my dads ashes and I could set aside all the crazy thoughts that had been consuming my brain. It turned out that this other man had passed away 3 years ago and 5 of his family members were present and asked if they could share our mass so they could bury his ashes as well. My uncle said he couldn’t very well say no to them as he figured that they needed to do this just as much as we needed to. I wonder though, why someone would wait 3 years and then show up 10 minutes before mass with such a personal request. I’m sure they had their reasons and I’m glad we could help them lay him to rest.

Spending 4 days with my immediate family was a challenge to say the least. Now don’t get me wrong…I love my family dearly…..but...

I need my space. I always have. Besides it might have been easier if the weather had co-operated. For most of the time it was raining or cool, humid and cloudy. We were fortunate that my very generous cousin let us stay in his cottage which was situated about 50 feet from the edge of the cliff that dropped off to the ocean. A set of stairs descended to the beach below where I ended up spending a fair bit of my time walking. Not a person to be seen and the only escape from my family and the mosquitoes. If I didn’t contract West Nile while I was there, I at least contributed to some sort of insect inflicted transfusion with the help of hoards of tiny winged blood bandits!
It’s so sad to be at the ocean and say that I only waded to my knees and didn’t go swimming at all. It was a combination of the lousy weather, cold water and all the jelly fish that were dotting the shoreline every couple of feet that kept me from jumping in. Then there is also the thought of all that exposed skin just waiting to be attacked as I would have had to run from the top of the stairs across the wet grass and into the cottage and wonder how many pints of blood I just gave as I scratched myself to death. My sister couldn’t believe how the little buggers loved only me. In 4 days I used most of a container of OFF! mosquito repellent. Without it I would have been the one needing a blood transfusion….this mosquito attraction is all new to me. I have never really been bothered by them until this summer, so get over me already and move on to your next victim!

......pst....found some dirt shirts......