Dad's Urn

 On Monday we picked up dad's urn. My mom and I drove up to Neptunes Society in Plantation, Florida. I didn't comprehend the weight of the moment until we pulled up into the parking lot. It was that awful feeling of permanence when a coffin hits the bottom of a grave and you hear that soft 'thud' and weeping ensues...even though the person has been gone for a while. Even though you've seen the body in the casket, gone through the service, heard the eulogy, sang, prayed, nothing prepares you for the moment of lowering into the grave and knowing this is their final resting place. That sound is the last sound associated with a loved one. When it comes to cremation, it's a different process...of course. 

There's no grave or procession from the church to the cemetery. In fact there was no procession at all through time and space toward a destination. Thanks to covid, we have shattered the procession of death. 

Zoom memorials allowed me to sit at my family's dining room table and orchestrate an hour-long retrospective on my Dad's life while speakers sat in their respective homes and talked. At the end of the ceremony I pressed the 'LEAVE MEETING' red button and the entire experience is ZAPPED away in an instant and compressed into a computer file. I keep the file on my desktop. The entire experienced has been flash frozen into a bytes that I can rewatch at any time. I put the ceremony up on youtube and shared it with friends and family in attendance. They too can go back through a click of a button, nod, maybe dab away a tear, and then zap it back into a file. The only procession me and my mom had was toward Neptunes Society in Plantation...to pick up the urn. 

After her doctor's appointment we drove and thought. We kept ourselves preoccupied with directions. It was the only thing we could put our minds on, even though GPS faithfully guided us. Our emotions could focus on the navigation toward Neptune. 

When we arrived the parking lot was empty. The funeral director whose name I think is Karen guided us into a conference room. She spoke at a respectful volume as she put several papers in front of us, explaining to my mom the death certificates and various forms. And then we walked toward a side table where the urn sat, along with the mini-urns for me and my sister. After a brief explanation, Karen packed up everything, put it in a purple bag, slipped a folder of papers in between the urn boxes...and that was it. 

They were respectful. I have no complaints about Karen or Neptunes. But it felt like me and my mom were waiting for something else. Another reveal, a final grave bottom 'thud' to everything. In absence of that, I became dizzy and untethered. It was only a flash of second but I felt my grief floating above me. Then I steadied myself before anyone noticed and guided my mom to the car. I put the purple bag in the back of the Honda CR-V, pushing aside envelopes my mom intended on dropping off at USPS. I told her we're not going to the post office. Of course not. It was a ridiculous thing to even consider this day as a series of quick errands...doctor's visit, pick up dad's ashes...dash off to the post office to return some packages...stop by hardware store and check out tile grout, etcetera. There was nothing left to do but go back home. There was no time to cry. I needed to drive. So I got back on the road. Steadying myself by gripping the steering wheel like a life raft, I drove us back home.  placed the urn in the dining room, on a side table near the mirror. I didn't know how to put this day in perspective and then I remembered the past weekend...

My partner is down here staying at our usual hotel on South Beach which is right near this beautiful marina and park. There's also a bridge there which leads to a bunch of little islands that lead back to the mainland of Miami. In the past I've told Yilong to walk over the bridge several times but he's resisted b/c he was just so happy staying in this picturesque spot on South Beach. So on Saturday I walked over the bridge to a few of the islands and thought about my Dad. I came back and told Yilong about it. The following day he walked across the bridge for the first time and he texted me back 'OMG, the other parts of the beach are so beautiful. And when he looked back on the marina park and hotel...he said everything seemed so small now with this new perspective. Something that he thought was 'a universe' was now just this tiny speck of land. I told him that was a great analogy of what my mind does to space and time: in the moment everything seems like the universe...but then you walk across a bridge and look back and the thing seems so different and differently proportioned.

Sitting with this urn in her home, my mom started talking in a stream of consciousness mumbled through tears and clutched hands. She was lamenting on all the 'mistakes' and started running through a list of things that could have been done differently. And I told her we have to keep walking. Even if we don't believe what's to come he has to keep walking across that bridge by waking up every day and honoring him. And then one day we'll look back at this patch of time/space with a new perspective and proportion. 

My Dad has left this vehicle and walked across a bridge. And I have to keep reminding myself that he both was this vehicle and also he wasn't...this thing This urn and these ashes are a representation of the thing that carried him a long way. And now he's stepped out of it and continues walking across the bridge. We will join him in this journey and have a new perspective once we cross our bridges and look back.