Ashes to Ashes

On 16th April 1990 the unthinkable happened, my mum passed away in the early hours of the morning. The reality should have been that I was prepared for what was the obvious eventuality of lung cancer but you don’t expect your mum to die do you, not at such a young age – she was 53. My Dad was with her when she died and he took me and my brother down to see her later that day. He also arranged for the funeral director to call that afternoon, even though it was Easter Monday and things were quite understandably quite raw. During the discussion it became obvious that my Dad wanted my Mum to be cremated – this came as quite a shock…..

If we rewind back a few years to when my first wife’s Gran died and my mum came to the funeral with me. I remember her crying and telling me that at funerals she often shed tears for her father who had died when I was only a very young child. She told me that she had been upset that her Dad had been cremated and how she would have liked to be able to go and sit next to his grave and talk to him when she needed comfort. She said that when she died she wanted to be buried, somewhere that just simply said that she had been here.

So on that fateful day I related all of this to my Dad and the Funeral Director but was talked down – I was told how graves get forgotten about as time goes on. In order to pacify me my dad said that once things had returned to normal we would all go somewhere as a family and scatter my mums ashes. Reluctantly I agreed but I wasn’t happy and even went to visit my mum in the chapel of rest, against my father’s wishes, to see her and apologise for what had been decided. The funeral was on the Friday and was a lovely event but I still wasn’t happy about the cremation. As we stood talking in the garden of remembrance after the ceremony there was suddenly a plume of smoke from the chimney which seemed to swirl around us as we got into the cars – it felt as though my Mum was expressing her anger.

Over the next few months I waited for my Dad to get in touch regarding the scattering of her ashes but what happened was that he formed a new relationship with the woman who became his second wife. It all happened very quickly and I began to feel that my mum’s ashes had been forgotten about. As time went on it became more difficult to raise the issue as I felt that he didn’t like my mum to be mentioned in case it upset his new wife. Slowly months passed into years and it got harder and harder to deal with and more difficult to ask the question that I needed to know the answer to.

As both my wives would probably testify the issue caused me much distress over the years. I contemplated asking the question many times, going over and over it in my head but whenever I was there in front of him or talking to him on the phone it just wouldn’t come out. The fact I had no idea what happened to my Mum’s remains was probably a contributing factor to repeated bouts of depression. In 2009 with the 20th anniversary of her death looming I sought counseling and it was one of the issues that I needed to talk about. At the end of the sessions though I was only a little bit closer to asking the question and then something happened.

Just as I was getting up the courage to ask my Dad was diagnosed with cancer and as his illness proceeded it seemed wrong to ask the question. As he approached death I had almost reconciled myself to never knowing what had happened to the ashes. One day in my Dad’s final week I was looking through the notes about his funeral on his computer and I found a document relating to what he wanted to happen to his ashes after his death. This made me quite angry as the issue of Mum’s ashes suddenly came crashing back.

He died on Friday 25th February and two days later I sat with my brother in the Hospice where he died waiting for the death certificate. It was at this point that I decided to ask him if he knew the answer to the question that had been troubling me for so long. He confessed that he didn’t but said he was happy to try and find out. So true to his word during the next week he made some time and eventually tracked them down to the funeral directors where they had sat in a cupboard for almost 21 years.

In the days between my dad’s death and his funeral I ruminated on what had happened and the instructions he had left for his ashes. He wanted them to be scatted in 4 places by 4 different groups of people. He wanted one lot to be scattered on Penshaw monument by members of a walking group he had been part of which was made up of ex Policemen. The second lot he wanted scattering on the Bents at Whitburn by his school chums. The third lot he wanted to be burried on the grave of the parents of one of my mum’s friends in Corbridge and he said he hoped that his second wife’s ashes would one day join him there. The final set he wanted to go to the home of his step-daughter in Spain.

There were two things that annoyed me about the arrangements. The first was that none of the scatterings were for his family – we were off handedly invited to the Penshaw monument scattering and obviously the one in Spain would include one of his Step -children but it didn’t include his actual offspring. the second thing was that he asked for his ashes to be scatter on the grave of one of my Mum’s friend’s parents (her friends ashes were also scattered there) and he wanted his second wife’s ashes to be scattered there. This hurt – what about my Mum’s ashes why didn’t he want to be scattered with them.It was like she’d been forgotten.

I contemplated how to raise these issues with my brother but in the end I didn’t have to because I think he felt the same way. This came up when we discussed my mum’s ashes and what to do with them. The logical thing would have been on the grave of her friend’s parents along with the remains of her friend and my Dad but that didn’t seem right – if he’d wanted that he would have said so. I suggested that we find somewhere near there and the place that sprang to mind was a pub called the Rat where we’d often gone on Boxing Day with Mum, Dad and her friend Maureen and husband Charlie. Then however it didn’t seem right scattering her ashes there without my Dad’s – this was getting complicated! My thought was that we should split my Dad’s ashes into 5 rather than 4 but who to raise that with…..In the end I didn’t have to as my brother had obviously been thinking along the same lines.

Then one day I was re-reading his instructions and his opening lines suddenly jumped out at me. He’d written

After my cremation I wish that my ashes be scattered in specified places. I do not want my ashes stored in some funeral parlour or buried in a plot in a crematorium where I will become one of the forgotten. My wishes are to have my ashes scattered where people will look and say to them selves that’s where Macs ashes lie and hopefully remember the good times

 

I suddenly thought was this a dig at us, had he also been waiting for all that time for us to ask about her ashes? I have resolved not to think about this too much otherwise it could be another 21 years of wondering and that is the last thing I need.

So last weekend I went with my family and my brother and his family to the Rat in Nortumberland where after lunch we walked down a footpath, through a wood and into a field where we scattered their ashes together on a beautiful sunny day high on a hill overlooking the Tyne Valley. So much time had passed that Garry and I were the only people there who actually knew my mum. We had both been married at the time of her death but had both since divorced and remarried. Beth, who would have been her eldest grandchild was only barely in existence at the time of mum’s death – we discovered the pregnancy the night before her funeral!

The whole process almost didn’t happen because when we arrived in the field Garry got the box containing Mum’s ashes out and when he looked at it we discovered that we needed a screwdriver to get it open! However I hadn’t come so far to fall at the last hurdle and after searching our pockets Garry found a key which fitted the screw heads and I sat and slowly unscrewed the six screws fastening the box. Then we looked at each other, wondering what so say, my Dad was always the one who found the right words to say and he was no longer there. In the end there were no words to be said…..

So we all took handfuls of the ashes and without pomp or ceremony scattered them in the field. I think she would have loved the idea of all of her grandchildren participating and laughing and joking as we scattered the ashes. She would have loved them all so much and it’s such a shame that she never lived to see any of them. Even the youngest participated – although Noah was a little too enthusiastic and ended up being covered in ashes when he got too close as Garry tipped the last of the ashes out of the box.

So that was the moment I had waited for 21 years for, not what she wanted and to be honest anything would have come up short. I would have liked her ashes to be scattered somewhere I would be able to go to on a regular basis but if I’d done that it wouldn’t have been somewhere that meant anything to her so this was the best compromise. I’m just glad for the closure that it has given me – the fact I’ve been able to write this shows how far I have come in the past two months.

Beauty beyond images

As a photographer I like to record images but sometimes I’m glad I didn’t take a picture that wouldn’t have done justice to the original vision. Two such occasions occurred within a few hours of each other while we were away in Weardale over the new year period. We had booked a cottage in a small village called Sunniside which is near Bishop Auckland in Country Durham. We knew the village because we had stayed at a smaller cottage just down the road earlier in the year. Both cottages are owned by the same man and as we had the full tribe with us this time we thought we better take the larger of the two. Most of the snow in the south had melted by the time we set off but further north there was a lot more snow around. In fact as we drove into the village there was still snow in the middle of the road and by the look of the piles on the roadside the road must have had to have been cleared by a snowplough at some point. When we reached the cottage the paths were icy and the doorstep was very slippery. After unloading the car we left the kids and headed off to the chip shop to get something to eat.

I find that there is nothing so frustrating than driving along and seeing something that would make a good photograph but not being able to stop and take one. This usually is more prevalent during the day but occasionally it happens at night too. Tonight was no exception – as we drove along the dark road the headlights of the car picked out a fence that bordered a field and hanging from the cross pieces of the fence were hundreds of icicles. The headlights of the car illuminated them and the light reflected off them, it was truly beautiful. I couldn’t stop to photograph them because we needed to get food and had no idea what time the chip shop was open till, also it wasn’t really safe to pull up as there was a great deal of snow on the roadside so I had to drive on making a mental note to maybe return the following evening to see if I could get a shot. Sadly that night the thaw started and the icicles were gone.

Icicles on hanging basket in back garden of cottage

The second opportunity presented itself the following morning and again there was no time to stop as we were already running an hour late to meet my brother at my dad’s house. The village of Sunniside is in a very rural setting and consists mostly of the main street and a few houses behind that. The village itself is surrounded by fields and as you travel out of the village the fields open up on either side of the road as you leave the village. These fields fall away from the road on both sides but on one side the slope is quite steep and there is a fine view down towards Bishop Auckland. The other side of the road has a number of wind turbines scattered across the fields which afford their own sort of beauty as they spin slowly in the breeze.

That morning had been very misty and the sun was struggling to break through, a watery outline could be seen through the haze as it struggled to make itself known as it climbed to it’s height as the time approached midday. It was just after 12 when we set off to go to Sunderland to meet up with my family. As we drove east out of the village we passed the houses and the little farm building at the end of the street where we take Ben to see the sheep on out nocturnal walks. As we passed the last building and the fields took over we saw the most beautiful sight. the sun had broken the cloud cover and although it was itself still hidden behind the clouds the rays were protruding above and below. The bight rays of light we then bouncing off the snow covered fields and producing the most spectacular celestial display – almost biblical in it’s grandeur! Almost everyone in the car stopped and just went wow!

The sun just before we set off that morning

Once again I couldn’t really stop and I don’t think I had my camera with me anyway. I think that maybe that was a good thing as any photograph, no matter how good, could have reproduced the sight we were witnessing. It would have probably produced a really great picture but I doubt that it could ever have been as good as the real thing. So I consoled myself with this though as I drove on – I still think I was right on both occasions and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t have reproduced the images that are still in my head as I write. I guess sometime you just have to put the camera down and record those images into your brain instead.

There was another set of visual images that I witnessed while we were in the north that made me have very conflicting feelings about the same phenomenon! As we were returning to the cottage one night we drove over a hill road and as we went over the brow of the hill there was a wonderful view of the town below with all the lights from streets and houses spread out before us and I thought to myself isn’t that beautiful. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I remembered that it conflicted with another thought I had had in the early hours of New Years Day as we returned from the Tar Barrel ceremony in Allendale. The traditional new years eve event takes place in a small town on top of the moors about 8 miles outside Hexham. To get there we followed the SatNav as although we had been before we had always travelled from my dad’s house so I set the SatNav to find the best route. I should have known when we got to the end of the road through the village and the road sign pointed right to Corbridge and the SatNav told me to turn left that perhaps we could be in trouble!

The route it took us on ran down through Weardale to Stanhope and just after we left the town it told me to turn right. Initially I missed the turn off and had to do a u-turn to get back onto the route. The road it directed us on was quite narrow and started to rise quite sharply! It turned out to be a single track road that took us up onto the top of the moors through darkness and snow covered fields. The route twisted and turned in the darkness, went over cattle grids and had ominously tall poles on either side of it to show snow ploughs where the road was! We climbed and climbed until we finally levelled out and as the road did we hit this patch of ice which, in the darkness looked just like a bit of damaged road surface but it must have been about 4 inches deep in the middle of the road and the car bounced over it rattling and shaking. We slowed right down as we began our descent and we did come across two or three more patches but we were ready for them this time.

The Allendale Tar Barrel Ceremony

The road that we had travelled on had taken us to a height of around 1000ft above sea level to a place called Rookhope which is an old lead mining town where, apparently, the Poet WH Auden first realised he was a poet! I’m sure if it hadn’t been so dark and scary it would have been a beautiful trip. We slowly decended down to the village of Allenheads and got back onto a main road which took us without incident down to Allendale itself where we arrived in time for the tar barrels. Sarah had already told me that we weren’t going back that way so I figured we would head back towards Hexham afterwards and then pick up the A68 which would take us back to Sunniside.

As we left the tar barrels behind we travelled out of Allendale and along the road which runs the 8 miles down to Hexham. Although being much bigger than the road we had arrived on it still runs across the moors and as we drove through the darkness I was aware of a huge amount of light pollution in the sky. There seems to be two sources, one closer that the other and I guess the distant source was coming from Newcastle some 30 miles distant. It was this light that I thought spoiled the dark of the night and ruined any chance of seeing stars and other astronomical effects that I would later consider to be beautiful when seen in a different context a few days later. Strange how things can be ugly and beautiful at the same time!