Why I regret scattering my grandmothers’ ashes..

Nineteen years ago (where has that gone!), my grandmother passed away peacefully after a glorious life full of laughter and fascinating adventures at an impressive age of 94. She didn’t have any funeral wishes, so we decided on cremation and a memorial service since this is what she had chosen for my grandfather when he passed away some years before.

When we collected her ashes from the funeral director, our family decided to scatter them in the crematorium garden of remembrance, where my grandfathers were. My parents scattered her ashes by a tree on a blustery and damp September day in a somewhat unceremonious pile, not what we had expected, and we all left feeling down heartened it wasn’t the loving final goodbye we’d imagined.

A couple of months later I visited to take some flowers with my parents. A bitterly cold and wet walk across the garden of remembrance in search of the tree where her ashes were scattered. Much to our anguish, there were so many trees in the garden that looked similar and they’d all changed over the autumn, we couldn’t recall the exact location of her ashes. We laid down the flowers on the permitted walkway by the building with the other mourners' flowers and spent a moment thinking of her before heading back to the warmth of the car.

Overall, the visit was miserable and filled us with guilt. It then became a subject no one wanted to discuss because we all felt ashamed for not remembering where her ashes had been scattered.

The garden of remembrance wasn’t what I had visions of in my mind. I’d expected a beautiful garden with interesting plants, trees, flowers and walkways much like a Botanical garden or country estate garden. What we were faced with was a drab, poorly maintained lawn with several struggling trees and dead flowers in plastic wrap left by mourners.

I regularly remember my grandmother and have photographs of her at home, so it seems a little unavailing to roam around a dreary garden in an attempt to make myself feel close to her when I can’t pinpoint the exact location of where her ashes were scattered. I feel the closeness by remembering stories and looking at photographs, and wish like anything, that we had not scattered her ashes so hastily after her funeral.

At the time, Life Treasury didn’t exist, I really wish it had, because I would be able to reminisce in the presence of my grandmothers ashes while reading her life story. We certainly learned the hard way about the consequences of scattering too quickly, but I hope others can learn from our mistakes should you need to decide what to do with the ashes of a loved one in the future.

Very Best,

Dean

*More to follow on this topic soon.