The Mother of an Urn
When his mother (Teresa Gunderson) died he was fifty-five years old, and her ashes were put into a wooden urn, with a cross on it, and a butterfly, she liked butterflies that’s why he specifically picked it out.
His brother, Mick Gunderson, thought they’d have a wake, of sorts, small just for the family, and Mick did all the coordinating, and calling up relatives (to include allowing his brother’s wife Delia, to attend in his place if she wished and bring the urn), and so forth, while Lee (the younger brother), insured everything was paid for, and collected what little money his mother left from her bank account, and insurance policies and so forth, enough for the urn, and wake, with a few dollars left over, but not much.
Well, when the time came for the wake, everyone showed up but Lee, for whatever reasons they were, he did not give to the family members, to include his brother.
The urn was set between two vases of flowers, and on a platform, with a podium for those who wanted to give an elegy, and Mick Gunderson gave his elegy, and his older daughter Sharma, the oldest of the nieces, gave her sentiments, as Teresa Gunderson’s brother Wally, and her several sisters sat in chairs just below the platform, asking where, and why Lee had not shown up (his wife informing him of the light conversations concerning his nonappearance, after her return home from the wake). The elder niece Sharma, noticed this also, and brought it up to her father’s attention. And the wake continued unabated.
As time went by, family members asked—if the the younger brother Lee, whom had the urn in his home, wanted to throw the ashes of his mother into the river, and be done with it, as his mother had said to do, but more in jest, than seriousness.
“No,” said Lee, adding: he couldn’t.
“Let me do it then,” said one of the family members, “I see you have it right in the middle of your living room, like a shrine.”
Later on, Sharma said to her father,
“What’s the sense of my uncle having those dead ashes of grandma in the house anyway?”
Whereupon a month later the older brother, Mick told his younger brother Lee, what his daughter had said, Lee took a slight offense to it but left it alone, knowing they knew little about anything in life other than what their immediate environment provided for them, in their conservative city of the Midwest.
After a long while, a year or so, another family member brought the subject up again, this time it was the daughter of Sherrill, the younger niece to Lee, and sister to Sharma, her seventeen year old daughter Carmella, mentioned to her grandfather, about her great uncle, saying,
“Why does my great uncle, keep ashes of a dead person in the house, how sick that is?”
The Grandfather, Mick Gunderson, told his younger brother of his granddaughter’s remark, perhaps a rhetorical question.
“She doesn’t know much does she,” the younger brother said, adding, “if she had done any living, or traveling, she’d understand other cultures, that there are different ways of life, of thinking, she would understand this is not so uncommon, among the other two-hundred countries that surround the United States of America, and therefore, it wouldn’t seem so unusual, or odd, or sick, they keep them in many countries in their houses, such as in Asia, and East Europe in particular—I’ve seen them myself, matter of fact, they keep the bones of the relatives out in the open, on shelves, in Cambodia, in a person’s backyard. Perhaps she thinks she’s too above everybody else, or she lives in box, all tightly bound that says: USA only.”
The older brother didn’t say a word, what could he say, he, himself was confused on the issue, and did little traveling outside of the United States, nor got involved with other countries, or cultures to weigh his brother’s statement, and Lee didn’t give him the reason why he did what he did, feeling it was his business, and no one else’s, and didn’t think it was such a big deal, or worthy of a long explanation, especially coming the mouths of arrogance.
Another year had passed by, then Lee decided to move, was about to move to South America, from Minnesota, his wife being Latin American, she had now lived in the United States going on six-years. During the process of selling his furniture, the issue of his mother’s urn came up again, during a visit,
“Why?” said Carmella, then added, “Look mom, my great uncle still has my Great Grandmother’s ashes,” and gave a horrifying look on her face, as she looked upon them.
Lee paid her little attention, and walked away as soon as she ended her sentence, and made her face to show her mother her disgust, and he went back to take care of business. She had said it in the sly, and didn’t realize he overheard her.
Soon after, Lee moved to South America and of course, brought his mother’s urn with the ashes in it, with him, right onto the airplane, and right on his lap.
A year after that, Lee’s brother Mick, brought up the issue over the phone, saying,
“You still got mom’s ashes?”
“For god’s sake,” Lee emphatically said, “it’s none of your business, you never wanted them in the first place, and I asked you.”
The older brother thought on this, like his two daughters thought, as they talked this issue over (a while back, prior to this phone call), for they had said, “What kind of man will not go to his mother’s wake, but keep her ashes as if they were sacred?”
One voice among the four had said this to all the rest.
The older niece, Sharma had said, “I bet grandma would like to rise from her grave and damn him!”
But then the brother had calmed down, told his two daughters, and granddaughter, “Its best left alone, we don’t know the whole of it.”
It was during this time, that Mick called Lee up, as I had just mentioned, and during that conversation, asked him kindly,
“Why is it brother you keep her ashes and never went to her wake, I ask you out of love, not scorn or judgment, and because the subject has come up in my family surroundings.”
“Because,” he said, “it’s my mother, its really nobody else’s business, but perhaps it is yours somewhat. You see, she was so dear to me, and she is so much dearer now to me, and I could not think of her being gone, thrown into a river, or left idle in a cemetery, where all those who said they loved her would never visit her, only left for the birds to flyover, and dogs to run by—perhaps urinate on her grave stone, flowers to grow around her and nobody to put them on her grave. Grandpa died 19-years ago, have you ever visited him (the brother said ‘no’), see what I mean. Now she will be with me and in a way, she never left. Had I gone to the wake I would have been sadder, this way, I will never be quite that sad. I know people talk against me, and say all sorts of unjust things, but I can say now I always had a mother.”
“That’s true,” his brother said.
And for the nieces they still continued to say, “What kind of uncle do we have?”
1-15-2009 (on the Roof, Lima, Peru)
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