ashes to ashes

The funeral director who wanted the big fat check up front never called me back on the designated day. It wasn't until I called him and said rather harshly to the receptionist "I feel a bit like I'm being jerked around," did they set an exact day and time for Tad's cremation.

The fact that his body is still here on earth and only a short walk from my house was haunting me. I kept fighting this urge to ask if I could come see him; an urge that was only conquered by the memories of other dead bodies I've seen here and there. They can look rather frightening after a few days. I was so afraid that I might see something horrible that I resisted my temptation to run over there.

His continued presence on earth was part of the reason I had a bit of what can only be called a "meltdown" while I was up in San Francisco for about one hour.

I was growing overwhelmed by the presence of all of Tad's belongings. The sempiternal homebody, he loved to keep his house full of nice things. This was at times a source of dissonance between the two of us: "I feel a bit claustrophobic in your house" was met with "Well your house is just as full!" This may be true but at least it's full of MY stuff.

I had a hunch driving to San Francisco on a major highway would be a bit too much for my sensitive system so I had my sweet friend Geof drive me up there. Once we arrived he helped me carry my bags into my apartment, asked if I was okay being alone and left.

I sat down at my computer and received a reminder email of a game night being conducted down in Santa Cruz - a room full of people who may or may not have known Tad. I looked around my place and realized that I didn't have that soothing calm feeling I usually do when I come home. This notion scared me: If I don't feel good at Tad's and I don't feel good in my own little cocoon where can I feel good.

I began to weep (of course) then I began to be afraid of this idea that no place felt comfortable and started hyperventilating. I knew I needed to find someone to drive me back down to Santa Cruz or take the train. But I couldn't seem to walk. All I could do was lie on the floor crying and rocking back and forth.

I tried to catch the subway to get a train but MUNI was running late, my sack weighed a million pounds, I was overwhelmed by the crowd (truth be told I was strongly put off by all the outer signs of fashion and wealth that I saw around me - it all felt incredibly frivolous and vapid).

Finally my friend Gregg agreed to drive me back down here.

I went to the evening festivities where we played a crazy game called "Werewolf" in which we take turns being villagers and werewolves eating someone (in the case of the werewolf) then murdering someone out of revenge (in the case of the villagers). I recognize it doesn't sound very soothing for someone who had just felt his husband shudder for the last time three days previously but in fact it was delightful to be concentrated entirely on something silly and inconsequential.

Coming home afterwards to sleep alone in Tad's house for the first time was difficult but once I stepped into his house -for the first time- I thought I could hear him inside of me, a voice I'd been waiting for since he died.

I don't know if this is something I completely project or if I actually believe that dead people communicate with me. I have had some uncanny experiences in life which at times I explain away by ascribing it to the powerful unconscious and other times I feel there are things happening on a level that I will never really comprehend. Lots of people have tried to convince me that one way is the true way - alas I am a doubting Thomas. I need to put my hand in the open wound in order to believe. And even then - even when very strange things occur in my world that have no logical explanation they tend to lose their credibility with me over time: Did that REALLY happen or did I just dream that?

When we arrived at the crematorium this morning for the final gesture I was sure it was the right thing to do yet hesitant to even get in the car. If no one shows up the funeral folks just do it themselves but they offered to let us attend without failing to mention "Normally we charge for this." Fortunately a few close friends had expressed interest in going and that gave me strength to do this last final gesture before the crematorium gives me a bag of ashes.

In short we went down a corridor to a rather stark industrial room with a wall of buttons and lights and two giant ovens, one with a long cardboard box in front of it on a mechanical platform. Scrawled on top of the box, 15 inches above Tad's once luscious mouth were the words: Name: Vern Crandall, Date of Death: 9-7-2011.

I was a little peeved. He really disliked his proper first name and had only ever been called Tad (or Thad in high school) as far as I could tell. Every time a nurse or doctor would pop their head in a hospital room and ask for "Vern" the two of us would wince slightly. In reality he got more and more used to being called Vern as he approached his death.

As the unskilled funeral director with the bad hair dye blathered on about crematoriums and temperatures, length of burn time and the cremation industry in general -- visibly filling the silence with anything that pops through his mind -- I found myself fighting the urge to reach over and take the lid off the cardboard box. To look at my beloved's face one last time. To perhaps open one eye lid and take in the beauty of his green irises. I wanted to straddle the whole box and grab him, hold him in my arms, pull him back into this world somehow. I wanted to insult the man who had been keeping his body hostage for the last five days instead of letting me continue to wash it with rose water and speak sweet things to it day in and day out. I resisted all of these urges.

With hindsight the last three hours we were together -when I did those very things- were the most precious, the most serene. It took some boldness on my part to listen to my gut and delay the arrival of the dispatch team; to stop the machine of phone calls and arrangements and just name my need: to spend some private time with my beloved's corpse. Once I did our time together was delicious. I got to slow down the clock and simply let him go at a pace that worked better for me. When the two young guys came to fetch him I felt ready. Well not exactly ready. I told myself that I could cling to this body forever and although it felt counter-intuitive I had to let him go with them in order to begin the process of letting go.

And that's what this morning was yet again: an uncomfortable, counter-intuitive thing to do. But the part of me that was reminded again and again that life is short told me I needed to go. The loving parent voice inside me that took me years to finally develop assured me that in ten years I will be so glad I helped push Tad's body into the flames.

Even in my hesitations I however underestimated how hard it would be. Were it not for my friends holding me on both sides I believe I would have fallen on the floor. Today's tears in front of the oven were accompanied by a wrenching of my body, uncontrollable movements of my legs, my hands gripping and tugging on my sports coat with no real objective - just raw sorrow.

When we were done we stepped outside to a sunny Santa Cruz morning. Across the sunlit valley I could see cars driving along the ridge that could only be the UC campus. In between were trees, the cemetery, the memorial gardens, even a glimpse of the massive Costco. I turned around so I could see the heat rising from the smokestack. I wanted to imagine somehow little particulates of Tad floating into the breathtaking San Lorenzo Valley in front of me, the valley where he lived for the last 18 years. I wanted to imagine his particulates feeding the giant redwoods on the slopes and the fish in the bubbling river where I had left my Widower tears just the day before.

My friend Richard had offered to take me back to the out-of-the-way canyon just a few minutes upstream from Tad's house. We had been there before but this time, the day before Tad's cremation, we decided to go deep into the forest, forging our own path til we got to a remote part of the river most tourists never reach. We climbed down carefully avoiding the poison oak and any slippery shale parts that might send us rolling to the boulders at the bottom. When we came out of the redwood forest we were in a sun-bathed part of the river with giant granite boulders and rapids all around. We put on our bathing suits and water-shoes, put our belongings in a waterproof pack and carefully floated and slid down the river in the icy cold, spring-fed water. It was glorious!!

At one point I stopped to lie on a warm river boulder with the sun on my skin and water gushing at an incredible force on both sides. I looked up at the redwoods and the sky. And I devoted it all to Tad. I asked him to come take a look, to enjoy through my body what his was no longer capable of enjoying.

A familiar voice spoke up in my head and told me that talking to the dead was silly but the loving teardrops falling into the river told me otherwise.