Faith Works 5-8-21

Faith Works 5-8-21

Jeff Gill

Ashes on the landscape

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Last week's column evoked a response like none I've ever had, and I'm rewriting what was going to be a second half to reflect some of it (part three next week, in other words). Cremation, and delayed services, are a subject of intense and even painful interest for a great many people. I knew it, but I'm feeling it all the more after reading your messages (and if I missed any replies, my apologies).

Households with a black plastic box on the counter, or in a cabinet, are many. And I have to add, this was an issue building up well before COVID closures came along. At my last parish ministry post, there was a point a few years ago where I had four boxes of cremated remains sitting under my desk. Cremation and waiting for another date, or for a partner's death, has been growing as a choice for years, but people are still very unsure how to deal with them literally in their hands. So asking a minister to hold onto them makes a certain amount of sense, even if it added a strange atmosphere to my office (they've all been since distributed appropriately).

Add to this the fact that more people, especially since the last year, have no church affiliation, and have taken the cost effective option of cremation only and just "pick up" the remains from the funeral home: who is in charge, and how do they handle things for final honors? Particularly when it's intentionally wished to be informal and low key?

I don't have to "like" it to understand that between cost and calendar, cremation is the new normal . . . but without clergy and funeral home support, people don't know what to do. And I'm too much a realist to say "well, everyone just go back to church." So I hope to help - plus I get many requests for "tell me what I need to do" from friends who are going to other states and places to scatter, and realize this many not be as simple as people think . . . which it is not.

To repeat from last week: if you're the one in charge, open up the box. It's okay, they won't jump out at you. You'll see a heavy duty plastic bag, sealed shut. You can't just tear it open, and that makes sense, right? So you need a tool to open it in hand at the location you're taking them to.

And the contents are five to seven pounds of grayish material. It's about half heavy and pours right out and down, and about half powder that does what powder does. So you need to figure out where people will stand, where you will be, and where these ashes are going. It's also where I strongly recommend that you, well, practice. Go to the spot in advance, or a similar location if you can't get there beforehand, and take a canister of talcum powder from the drugstore. Open it, pour some out. Yep, where a bunch of that goes is where those ashes will go. Yeah, it can swirl or reverse direction. Glad you practiced yet? It's just talcum powder. This time.

Ashes can be "in-urned" and put behind a niche in a cemetery, or in the ground. That may be looking like a better idea as you think about this, but it will have to be paid for, up front. If you want to go to a previous family gravesite and scatter ashes there, just understand the cemetery rules may require a fee for doing so. I'm not defending that, I'm just cautioning you. Ditto for placing an urn in a casket, which makes even less sense to me, but I don't run a cemetery.

Please understand: just because the deceased asked to have their ashes scattered someplace does NOT mean you have the right to put them there. On someone's front yard to settle a score, for instance. I've seen some strange locations requested, and as a minister, have had to explain "that's not a good idea." Placing ashes in a container in an appropriate place is the safest, and some say the most respectful option.

But if the last request was for scattering, and you know it's alright to gather people there and do so with permission, I'll offer a few more words on how you might go about that.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his ashes are not ready to be scattered in any case. Tell him what you have in mind at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.