Published: February 23, 2007 10:52 am      

Ashes to ashes, urns to trunks, dad in limbo

My father lives in a solid, square box. He's been there for eight years. Although, given his condition, I don't think "lives" is the best verb to use.

Because he's dead. So instead, I should say my father's remains remain in a lovely, expensive, marble urn my sister bought. They've been there since Dad returned from a medical school somewhere in Texas, having shown in death a generosity many might not even show in life, by donating his body to medical science.

At first, my mother placed him on the fireplace mantle. Then she began taking him along in the car, on outings and the like, all the while joking that "Dale was enjoying the family dinner," or he was "getting tired and wanted to go home." Eventually, Dad did come to have a semi-permanent resting place.

I wonder what he would think if he knew his ashes sit somewhere in another sister's house, awaiting burial in the family plot down in Jackson County, W.Va. Some family members might disagree with me, but I think he'd get a kick out of it. Pop a top off another can of Coors, put pen (rarely a pencil) to crossword puzzle, and just grin.

I believe this because I remember the long, empty pine box that sat inside our garage in the backyard, next to one of his two beloved MGs, which he kept meaning to get around to restoring-reviving its luster of years gone by.

"You can just put me in the box and bury me out back, Eileen," he would grin, joking with my mother about his intended casket.

Truth be told, he wouldn't have cared one whit if she'd done just that. And that is why I know he wouldn't mind that we haven't gotten around to burying him yet.

It isn't that we haven't wanted to. It isn't that there hasn't been the time. It's just that-well, how can I say this diplomatically-the relatives waged war about how he was to be buried. Not where-just under what conditions. To have, or not have, a minister. (Franklin D. Roosevelt was probably president the last time my father set foot in a church.) To have, or not have, a flag, taps and military tribute. (A Navy man, he fought in the Korean Conflict.) To have, or not have, a burial service.

My mother and I believed his last wish was to have a simple burial, without pomp and circumstance of any kind. With his love of flight, and ever a pilot at heart, we really thought he might have enjoyed having his ashes sprinkled from an airplane, somewhere over West Virginia. In fact, he had once said as much.

But other family members wanted all the pomp and circumstance that could be had. So Mother stonewalled, waiting for the family to come to terms with what she believed were Dad's last wishes, which he had, after all, related to her before he died. And somehow, in the meantime, eight years have passed. We were supposed to bury him a few years ago, but something happened. Then again last year, but that didn't work out, either. Now here it is 2007, so why not just wait another two years, and we can have some kind of a decade celebration-kind of like an anniversary in reverse.

My father's ashes are not the only ones that have remained as, well, remains. I have been compiling a list of similar cases, and think I may have enough to make for some really good reading. Except that West Virginia author Belinda Anderson already beat me to it. Two years ago, I met Anderson at a writer's workshop. I was surprised when she began discussing one of her short stories, about a character who drives around with her dead sister's ashes in the car trunk. It is fiction, but I'd be willing to bet Anderson based her story on a real-life scenario somewhere.

It could have been that she knows my good friends Vicki and Dan, who related a true story of their own from several years ago. Dan, an ace mechanic, was working on a client's Volkswagen when he accidentally knocked over a container inside, spilling out what he thought was sand. Dan, good soul that he is, scooped up what he could-then vacuumed the rest.

Turns out what Dan really vacuumed was the woman's deceased husband. She had been carting him around for years. The woman told Dan her husband never liked Volkswagens, so Vicki and Dan think maybe she kept him around as poetic justice, forcing him to ride in the car that he probably turned up his nose to while alive.

I guess she showed him!

Then there is the story about my dear friend. Shirley died in 2000, and her husband has yet to pick up her remains from the mortuary. Now, being the romantic fool that I am, I thought he was just so overcome with grief that he couldn't bear to bury her. Turns out, his reason was much more pragmatic: He had given the mortician a bid for some contracting work-but the mortician settled for another, lower bidder. No harm, no foul, right?

I guess it depends on your perspective. As my friend's husband explained, he lost money by not getting the job, so he left both his wife's ashes and the unpaid bill there, at the funeral home. That's the truth, which I'll swear to on my father's uh ... urn.

I once wanted to be cremated, but in the last eight years, I think I've changed my mind. Because, after hearing so many stories about the ashes of the deceased, how and where and why they end up in a state of limbo-dead, but not really gone, I guess you could say-I think I'm going to settle for a funeral.

At least then I won't end up riding around in someone's trunk.

Daleen Berry is a staff writer for the Times-News.