Jeremiah Tolbert

While I was vis­it­ing fam­ily over Christmas, the sub­ject of my father’s ashes came up with my step­mother.  We had orig­i­nally intended to spread his ashes the sum­mer after his death on the lake, but I don’t think any of us were ready to let go in that way yet, so we put if off.

It’s been five years and my step­mom has started to see another guy.  I’m happy for her, and I think she’s start­ing to think about mov­ing past Dad, think­ing about his things, and par­tic­u­larly his ashes.  She brought it up at din­ner, and we dis­cussing mak­ing more con­crete plans to do some­thing with them next summer.

As we were leav­ing, she made a joke about how in the sum­mer, she moves them down to the base­ment for tor­nado sea­son, that she wouldn’t want my father’s remains blow­ing away in a huge storm.  We turned at looked at each other and laughed then, because, actu­ally, my dad would have loved the idea that his ashes were spread by a tornado.

I’m pretty sure it’d be ille­gal, but I almost want to con­tact some storm chasers and see if they could spill his ashes in the path of the big Kansas twister.  My love for where I grew up comes a lot from my Dad, and the idea of him being dif­fused over all of it, mak­ing the entire north­east cor­ner of the state is rest­ing place, has an amaz­ing poetry to it in my mind.  I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t want the same thing done to me if I man­age to fail at achiev­ing immor­tal­ity and pass away.

There could be worse fates for his ashes.  We’ll be think­ing between now and sum­mer if there are bet­ter ones.

Share This:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Tags: ashes, cremation, father, tornadoes