Ashes

Each year we do something special for a death anniversary, a passed loved one's birthday and even for Father's Day. Usually, Father's Day and Ken’s birthday are within a few days of each other. Therefore, we take that opportunity to combine the two and figure something out that is a little extra. For his 10th death anniversary, we wanted to do half of Pikes Peak and take a portion of ashes with us….

Ashes is a huge topic of me in the end just wanting to pull my hair out, but I’ll leave this for another time. For this particular event, I consulted the kids as to how we should handle this. Ken’s urn has been for an entire decade inside a velvet case which has never been opened. I saw no use in portraying it anywhere and left it in the case inside my closet… maybe not the most sentimental place but it is what it is.

Upon much back and forth with the kids as to how and what and when, we sat on the floor in a circle with Ken’s urn in the center. I had never opened it and let the kids know to be prepared for uncharted territory. The question of how we would transport a portion of the ashes came up… we agreed that any food containers could never ever be used again. Mason jars would most likely break on the way up the mountain. Thus, we settled on ziploc bags …. as we each held a ziploc bag in our hand anticipating the opening of the urn as if it were a genie’s bottle, my daughter weighed in on how ‘wrong’ this all seemed. The utter lack of sentiment was in the forefront of her complaint. I reminded her that we had been through the containment selection process and that I am sure daddy would not mind…

I opened the lid of the urn and saw a piece of paper from the funeral home. Another second of light heartedness was gained… lifting the paper I saw a plastic bag with a tie…. another few seconds gained. Since I could not lift the ashes out of the urn, I pitched the next hurdle to the kids: scooping ashes. With the same level of sentiment my son retrieved a plastic spoon accompanied with my daughter’s constant reminders of how wrong all this was. I told them to open their bags, and everyone would receive three scoops. In my head I was praying that we would not encounter a tooth as I remembered a friend’s story about her husband’s ashes.

Ashes itself are not like ashes we know. Apparently, bones do not burn and are therefore ground up into an ashlike substance. With our scoops in our ziploc bags we each closed them and put them into our hiking packs.

The following day could best be described in two words: it sucked. It sucked to hike this mountain on Father’s Day with tons of dad’s and kids on the same trail. It was nearly impossible to find a quiet spot which allowed for some privacy. It was even more impossible to find the perfect spot for our scoops of ashes…. at last, we settled on a spot that seemed meaningless, but we gave it meaning. It was a spot that looked right at the peak. Perfectly simple and yet special. We each emptied our bags and said something to Ken, leaving the mountain 3 ounzes of ashes lighter…. and probably another two kilos to go.