Family secrets
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, floor space at The Manor is at a minimum these days. The renovation is going much more slower than anticipated, mostly due to Cody's new found love for golf and the primo cool weather temperatures in the Rocky Mountains this summer that make tee time so palatable. Currently every room is partly torn up and just today all the appliances for the kitchen arrived and are sitting in their looming boxes, towering over the front entryway. So this past weekend when the kids were with Matt and my mom and I were plotting a way to make sense of it all with our limited means to deal with it, we tackled the bigger, more glaring problems. Things like dressers and beds were allocated to the correct rooms so that Loren would have his own boxers rather than Devon's Lightning McQueen underwear when they returned from their dad's house Sunday night. Once the necessities were done my mother paused, cleared her throat and said, "So, um, there is another item we must address."
I thought for a moment and wondered if perhaps she had some dark secret of mine she had uncovered, "Oh, right. What do you mean?". I asked, not really wanting to know the full answer.
"Well, it's your father." She replied.
Right. Yes, he died. Two years ago and I still really don't want to talk about it lest I burst into tears. And while two years of living with my mom has created some bonding moments, I can't revisit that grief right now. It is just a scab I can't pick at the moment. So I cautiously asked, "What do you mean?"
"His ashes are still up in his loft."
Right. Big Bomb. Ouch. My mother never went back to sleeping in the master bedroom after my father died. She migrated upstairs to his loft/office area and I have spent the last two years in the master bedroom until just a few weeks ago when Cody/Juan removed the bed and I moved to Loren's old loft. Upon his return from Missouri Loren has been sleeping in the my father's old space while my mother has moved into Cassidy's old room since she hates to sleep alone and has been sleeping in Devon's new room in his gigantic car bed. A bad case of musical beds, but it keeps everybody comfortable and in their safe zones. Unless, of course, Loren happened to discover that the books on the shelves were not just old classics but also happened to house both his grandfather's ashes and those of the dog.
Here I have to digress and mention that we are not so good about putting the dead to rest in our family. My maternal grandmother passed away in 1984 and her ashes are still in the wall of a Denver hospice. My maternal grandfather died in 1990, his ashes lie inside our old barn within a vintage firetruck just north of The Manor. My paternal grandmother's ashes were actually buried in the family plot close to our home, but although she died in 1994 we have yet to decide on a headstone for her. So the fact that my father's cremains remain just upstairs next to the dog's is not really a shocker. Maybe a hard bit of info for a 15 year old to digest, but none too shocking for the rest of us.
While we were having this exchange my mom sat at an old that desk graced my father's law office for 25 years before he left his practice and became a judge. I noticed the deep drawers and suggested that perhaps that would be as good of a place as any. She seemed comforted by the idea and went up to the loft to retrieve both my father and the dog. I did ask her if perhaps she might have a more permanent resting place for both of them. We tossed it about, even joked about the idea of creating stepping stones from all the various family members and placing them in the garden. We are a bit whacked that way.
For now my father's ashes have a new resting place and Loren won't run across them and have the sort of Teen Meltdown I try so hard to avoid. And while I don't at all equate that box of dust to the man who was my father, I do sort of wonder why my grandmother is in a wall and my grandfather is out in the firetruck. Why can't my family put it all to rest? I suspect that question will take more than two years of living back in the family homestead to answer.