The urn
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My son would be four years old now.
He would be a rambunctious little boy who would love playing with his two older brothers. He would be happy, stubborn and delightful. We would take him to splash in the puddles along our street on rainy days. We would then walk to the bush next door with all the caterpillars and take some home, to hopefully release later as butterflies.
But that is not my reality, and from the moment of his conception, it never could have been.
My son was born with a disorder which affected most of his organs and limbs. It is unlikely he could ever have jumped in those puddles, or have seen the caterpillars, let alone have freely touched them. One mutated gene meant that his life would he hard and it would be short.
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A box of his things sits quietly in the corner of his little sister’s room. They will never meet. She is still too young to understand that she is alive because he is not.
It is the urn that lingers in my thoughts.
After all this time we still have not collected it from the funeral home. It sits (presumably) next to the other urns, waiting patiently to be collected by loved ones at an undetermined time. We have not forgotten it. We definitely have not forgotten it. I know it is there and he is safe.
Many people might find it strange that we have not collected our son’s ashes. If ever somebody asks me why, all I can manage to say is I’m not ready before the tears start rolling. The urn is the only thing outstanding. It is the last thing we have left to do for him. Irrationally, I feel that once this is done, that everything about his life and death will be finished. His story will be over and I will have to be done with him.
The urn is the incomplete part of a complicated puzzle, and it maintains an open connection between us. His story was so much more than a ceramic jar. He lived, and by doing so he changed us, and in death, he changed us even more. On the outside we may look the same, but our journey with him started a chapter I had never imagined possible. It is not over yet. I do not want to finish it. By not collecting the urn, I do not have to.
I was not able to keep him living, so it is now in death that I must keep him in existence.
It is my duty to keep his story alive for his older brothers, who themselves were so young when he died. How can they love him if they do not remember him? His little sister will forever live not having known him at all. She will only know him through the stories we tell her and the photos we show her.
I cannot let his memory die. Then he will be truly gone.
I am Patrick’s mother, and I want people to remember that he lived. Sometimes I too need reminding that he lived. His death is such a dominant force that is has a way of over-shadowing his life. I looked after him; I fed him, bathed him, held him, kissed him. I need to remember that.
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When we do finally decide to collect the urn, that there will be an expectation to do something with it. Do we scatter his ashes, bury them, or release them into the wind?
Do we simply bring the urn home and place it next to his photo on the shelf?
Or do we store it in the box of his things so that everything can be neatly kept together?
I do not know which, if any, of these things we will decide to do. What I do know is that I am not ready to let him go. Therefore, the urn can stay safely where it is. For now, anyway.
If your child was cremated, did you keep the urn? Did you disperse the carbon that remained, or do you have the little pot somewhere in your life? What does either your dispersing or your keeping — or, like Lana, your hesitation — mean to you as the years pass?