This is the last in a series of not-stand-alone posts about my brother Mark and his death, which occurred on Sunday, August 2, 2020 during the COVID pandemic. Long-running, self-indulgent remembering and lamenting in loosely elegiac form is what’s supposed to be happening, but I hope this last one lightens things up a bit.]

Mom has decided to have Mark’s remains cremated and then interred in a box at the local cemetery where her husbands are buried (my dad and my late-life step-dad John), and where she too will eventually be buried. I can’t remember exact why I end up in the cemetery offices, and I don’t even remember if it’s before or after the funeral service, but I think I’m there with my brother Ted and Mom to wrap up some business. We’re sitting down with the business guy (I’ll call him Mr. Burial Business or BB) and he unexpectedly says something like, “Do you want any of the ashes?”

This throws me. What does it mean? Mr. BB explains that I can have 5 percent of Mark’s ashes. This throws me even further. What is the volume of 5% of the ashes of a cremated human being? Why would I want them? How would you give them to me?

If I decide to have them, what exactly would I do with 5% of Mark?

**********

Mark was always adamant about not wanting to be buried in a coffin. Many times he asked me to make sure he was cremated and dispersed. The thought of a full-body burial made him feel claustrophic and sullied. He didn’t want his body drained and preserved and locked in a fancy crate in which it would slowly disintegrate, in a space where people would occasionally come stare down at the grass 6 feet above his encaged remains and ponder memories of Mark.

Mark hated Dad’s open casket funeral. I remember him saying to me, in a mood that was a mix of grieving and glum and slightly disgusted, “That’s not Dad.” And of course it wasn’t. Dad was long gone by the time we saw his painted and well-dressed and cold body at the funeral.

********

I agree to take 5% of Mark’s ashes. It’s a little weird, but together with the 5% my brother Eric takes, it means that 10% of Mark won’t be locked in a box at the cemetery. And that’s the best I can do for Mark, because Mom has a plan. She sees where his box of ashes will be stored in the cemetery complex, in a wall of neatly arranged cubbies, hundreds of cubbies that are slowly being filled in with the ashes of people. She’s pleased, she says, because from where Mark’s box sits, he will be able to look over Dad and John and eventually her. They’ll all be together.

I ask Mr. BB how I’m to receive the ashes. He says I have to buy an urn, or provide an appropriate container of some kind, and then they can give the ashes to me in the container. I have a loose memory of Ted asking about the prices of urns sold by the cemetery, and another loose memory of Ted and me shaking our heads in disbelief at the extortionary prices. Also the urns are huge and Grecian and ornate and fancy, and ugly, and do I really need a container that big for 5% of my brother?

*******

Mark didn’t care for fancy things or, come to think of it, ownership of things. Or obeying laws, for that matter. I suppose he was something of an anarchist. He was also an unbelievable slob. I swear the color of his skin wasn’t a tan but just a thin layer of grime. As a result, he didn’t sunburn. What lived on his skin was more effective than a chemical sunscreen and probably more wholesome than the mineral variety. He was a walking probiotic. I marveled that he didn’t smell. His clothing was messy and torn and stained, his sneakers were always folded over at the heel and didn’t have complete laces, and he didn’t seem to care. He drove a filthy old car, the interior shredded by his dogs. He would feed those dogs by pouring dry dog food out onto the floor in Mom’s garage. Wherever he lived turned into a mess of dirty and broken stuff everywhere. In his day-to day-life, when mom gave him stuff, he accepted. When mom didn’t give him stuff, he also accepted. He was like a stereotype of a homeless person, but with a home.

Mark hated the cost of my Dad’s death. Not only were there hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses from the heart surgeries and 3-week hospital stay that preceded it (insurance covered the medical costs, and the hospital and doctors made a killing, so to speak), there was also the massive stone-lined coffin and all the other expenses of burial. Mark spoke to me more than once about what a racket it all was, just another way for big businesses to take advantage of people at their lowest.

*********

After some dialogue with Mr. BB, including an acknowledgment that “the container” for Mark’s ashes can be a two dollar tupperware tub with a lid, I decide I’ll go find my own ash pot and provide it to the cemetery.

Where does one buy a receptacle for human ashes? I hit the internet and discover boutique shopping sites dedicated to human remains. It’s a little creepy, and it’s all outlandishly expensive and mostly the options look like cheap flower vases. That won’t do for Mark.

I head over to Amazon. It also has a collection of hideous urns, but I spy a small box made of rosewood and carved with non-religious images. It’s made for cremation remains and is “x-small.” This seems right for 5% of Mark. I tuck a couple of those in my shopping cart (one for me and one for Eric) and start to check out. 

That’s when I notice that these little boxes are for pet remains.

It gives me pause for no more than 15 seconds. They are reasonably priced, they are pretty, and they are for dogs!

Mark would love it. 

*******

Mark’s collection of found dogs, living in a half-feral pack in the yard, was the closest he came to experiencing a sort of ownership. But of course, he didn’t think he owned them. It was more like he was one with them, part of a collection of lost souls finding community with each other and breaking as many rules as possible – not maliciously or intentionally, it’s just that they were untrained dogs. Mark had a lot of dog companions over the years. Buddy, Goldie, Sheba, Girl, Miley; at the end Bailey, Whiskey, Darla and Dolly. Maybe there were two Buddies and possibly a Boy along the way. I’m sure I’m missing a few. 

Mark could come across as emotionally flat or oddly upbeat to folks who didn’t know him, but that was a mask. I knew him to be a person who was filled with pain built on empathy and longing and sarcasm. One year he spent Thanksgiving with us out here in Wisconsin.  We had several families over for the holiday, and the evening conversation turned to dogs. Somehow we ended up talking about our dogs dying, and this turned into an impromptu game I called “My dog died more horribly than yours.” 

(This was a sequel to other games I’ve made up over the years, including “My family is more f**ed up than yours” and “My kids are more f**ed up than your kids.” You’d have to play a round to appreciate how much fun it is. With the right people.)

Everyone took turns, and the tales mounted. There were many declarations of “aww” and “that’s sad” and “I’m sorry.”  

Mark’s turn came. “My dog Buddie ran out on the street outside my house and got hit by a car.  He managed to run back into the house and jump into my arms, and then he died in my arms.”

There was something firm and unforgiving and self-judging in Mark’s voice.  Silence engulfed us for a few moments.  And then someone declared “okay, Mark wins.” Awkward laughter broke out and the game was over.

*******

Eric and I each get a little bit of Mark in a little box meant for pet ashes. The rest of him goes into the designated locked metal cubbie in the cemetery, with his name engraved on the cover. His slot is about 7 feet high, maybe 8 inches square as I recall, though I could easily have that wrong. I find myself staring at it after he’s interred, and I’m seething. He got his cremation but he’s still locked in a box! It’s not right! I want to raid the cemetery at night dressed like a ninja, break the lock and grab 90% of Mark, and set him free somewhere.

I have to remind myself: it’s not Mark in there. It’s just ashes. Mark is long gone. 

*******

Mark visited us in Wisconsin a handful of times over the years. We always took him to Lake Michigan. Along our favorite stretches of the lake, between Milwaukee and Sheboygan, the beaches are thin and beautiful and austere, not like the wide ocean beaches Mark knew from California. The first time Mark visited, we told him we were taking him to “the beach.” When he walked over the dunes and spied the narrow band of sand at our favorite state park, he snorted derisively. “You call this a beach??” 

But I think Mark learned to see the unique beauty of a great lake shore, especially since my family loves it so much and made him visit it repeatedly. I have weirdly clear memories of him sitting on a log, staring out at the lake quietly. I like to imagine that as he looked on the vast waters, he marveled at how his talented and smart sister, making the big lawyer bucks in a big city, had gone to seed as a full-time mom in Wisconsin.

Stranger things have happened. 

******

Some time after we get back to Wisconsin from Mark’s funeral, we take that little rosewood box made for pet remains, filled with 5% of Mark, to a special place on Lake Michigan.  We walk along the dune boardwalk to a spot with a stunning view in all directions.  Here we will release his ashes.

As we’re standing there trying to feel contemplative and intense, saying meaningless things like “Mark would like it here” and “this is a great spot for Mark”, and I’m trying to figure out how to open the box, and we’re thinking we’ll just step over the rope off the boardwalk a few paces… We spot some people ambling toward us along the boardwalk.  

There are never people here. Who are they and why are they here? Shit.

It’s okay, we’ll go fast because if they get here, the amblers might be freaked out by what we’re doing.  I finally pry the box open, imagining I’ll find a little pile of fine ash inside and will have deep feelings and will sigh and cry.  

But this is not how it goes.

The cemetery has put 5% of Mark in a small plastic bag, nestled in the box.  It’s like a wee ziplock. 

My little bit of Mark is in a dimebag. It makes me giggle.

I pull out that uncouth baggie and open it.  The amblers are approaching steadily so we can’t go off the boardwalk without potentially getting in trouble.  Anthony hurries me along.  “Just do it, just do it, here is fine.”  So I release the ashes gently into the breeze that’s ruffling our hair and those ashes float off across the dunes.  

Nope, that doesn’t happen either. 

It seems human ashes are quite heavy.  

The ashes fall straight down with a little poof in a discolored pile about 6 inches across, on the sand right next to the boardwalk. Shit shit shit.

I reach out a foot and just sort of move them this way and that with my sandal, so they’re less conspicuous.  

Anthony is shaking his head, and I’m trying not to laugh, and the kids are anxious about potentially breaking the law.  We walk away quickly along the boardwalk, pretending we haven’t done anything.  

Somehow, nothing could be more perfect than this send-off for Mark. 

 ********

We’ve walked past Mark’s ash spot many times in the past few years.  I find that I don’t have special feelings about it.  There’s nothing especially holy about the place, nothing particularly spiritual or sanctified. Mark is with me in that spot because of my memories of walking through it with him, not because I dumped his ashes there. I’m grateful that my mind hasn’t made a fetish of the place.

And yet, I still think regretfully of Mark’s remaining ashes, trapped in a cubbie in a cemetery in California.  Someday, if I outlive my mom, I have a loose plan to go back and retrieve them. Legally. I hope to set all of Mark free (save the 5% my brother Eric has).  I can try to create a better ritualistic moment next time.  Maybe I can make it more meaningful somehow, more filled with grief and regret and deep thoughts. 

No.  I take that back. Maybe I can make it more joyful, more full of acceptance.  I can imagine it, whether or not it ever actually happens.  

I’ll walk out of the cemetery business offices carrying a gallon-size ziplock of Mark’s ashes, contained in an X-Large pet box made of rosewood.  My step will be light, spry, relieved.  I’ll laugh out loud as I get in the car and put pedal to metal. 

Mark’s ashes and I will drive out to a river somewhere, maybe the Mokelumne River a bit north.  Mark used to enjoy inner-tubing on it.  I’ll find a quiet spot – no unexpected people, please. I’ll take his bagged ashes out of the pet box and carry the ziplock into the river.  I’ll wade to a place where I’m waist-deep and there’s a solid current and there’s no eddying.  I’ll open the baggie and carefully stand upstream.  I’ll hold the open lip of the baggie just under the water downstream and watch as Mark’s ashes go free.  I don’t know if they’ll sink or float, but it doesn’t matter.  

I’ll say a few words to myself, maybe not even out loud.  Dude, I’ll say. I came through for you. You’re free.  Go be happy somewhere.  I’ll try to do the same right here.  So long, Mark.

I hope I’ll laugh, but maybe I’ll cry a little too. I’ll look up at the sky, at the shores of the river, at the foliage around; I’ll listen to the sounds of birds and bugs, the warble of moving water.  I’ll ponder life and death like a million billion primates have done before me.  

I’ll walk back to whatever vehicle I’m driving.  I’ll be soaking wet and uncomfortable.  I’ll towel off, have a drink of water, and carry on with life until it’s my turn to follow Mark.