Still Remains

Personal revelations with regard to the remains of a loved one.

May 2022

Just like any number of other lessons life has taught me tangibly over the years, I never really understood the fascination with a loved one's remains - until that loved one was mine and she came into my possession. 

Collecting her from the funeral home was as much fun as you might expect. It had been a long drive, I didn’t want to be there, and it was taking longer than expected because I had questions for which answers were not readily available. Eventually, I was presented with a simple, black plastic box with her name, date of birth, and date of death on it, which temporarily paralyzed me.

The thought of popping open that box was, coincidentally, a Pandora-like affair with regard to an impending spectrum of full-tilt human emotion. It would certainly be toothpaste that I could never get back in the tube. Maybe it’s because I felt like I had nothing left to lose or couldn’t possibly feel worse, but it took me all of twenty seconds alone with that box to get to the point that I opened it and removed the clear, sturdy, zip-tied plastic bag of hydrolyzed her, to hold and inspect knowing full-well what would happen to me next. 

It wasn’t quite as intense as the moment I “got the call,” but it was in the arena. Once formalities were completed, I stoically and stiffly withdrew from the funeral home and cried from the second my hand hit the “push” sign on the door handle to the moment I pulled into the hotel parking lot.

It had been such a long drive and it was so late in the day that I had no intention of driving back “home” through rush hour traffic in Seattle - so I opted for a hotel room in Kirkland for the evening. Once checked in and alone with her, I clutched her remains to my body in varying, awkward ways, in an attempt to get her as close to me as possible but also not feel and look absolutely psychotic - all were abject failures. Stranger still, I kept shifting the clear plastic bag, looking for the larger chunks and bone fragments. As if there would be something recognizable as her in a bone fragment.

Eventually, I settled on her next to me on the bed and I began to scan cable television for distraction. I found “King of the Hill.” The animated series was a favorite show of ours independently. That afternoon it happened to be on a Spanish-speaking channel, which mattered not as I was intimately familiar with the episode and its plotline. Despite the fact that both Bobby and Luanne’s voices were two octaves huskier than they should have been, I was grateful to have it. 

So there I laid on a budget hotel bed, semi-propped by pillows, sipping whiskey and watching King of the Hill in Spanish with a bag full of Kara on my chest. On its surface, that might read like a pretty sad scene, but it was perhaps the most comforted I had been since losing her. My pivot from “that’s some kind of bizarre shit” to “covets the ashes guy” was swift and ardent.

My relationship with present-form Kara is evolving. For the most part, I bring her with me. Not like, to the grocery store or to the bathroom. But when I change destinations, go for a hike, or somewhere with intention. To some degree though, I’ve muted the emotions that emanate incessantly from the bag that is now her, in the name of self-preservation.

I still treat her with reverence, though. She rests on her own pillow next to me in bed, I try to leave her with a view when I’m away, and I protect the bag at all costs. I wonder about that sort of behavior, though. Like, why? It seems oddly juvenile and kind of embarrassing when I catch myself doing it. But I still do it as if requisite. Perhaps the weirdest thing currently is that I feel the need to regularly “fluff” her still remains. I get strangely upset when she gets too flat or settled - lifeless.

Well, maybe I just hashed that out in real time, and it kind of makes sense, actually.