Lesson "Urned"

The past few weeks were full of emotion as my family prepared and hosted my dad's memorial.  Due to the pandemic, the time crunch associated with closing an estate that was reverse mortgaged, and our various schedules it took approximately eleven months to officially say goodbye.  Waiting was necessary, but it prolonged the grieving and two weeks later I am still brimming with emotion and completely deflated.    

One thing I know is that my parents would NOT want to see me or my brothers sad.  They would want us to remember them fondly and laugh at some of the more absurd moments.  So, now is as good a time as any to tell you this truly absurd, true story.  

**This is an admittedly humorous, but cautionary tale in case you too find yourself in our predicament.  Learn from the error of our ways. Trust me on this.  

My dad was a packrat (read: HOARDER) and if he had been alone, I'm quite sure he would have been on a real episode of Hoarders.  At one point he had grain trailers on the property he owned, and they were full of junk, and rats/snakes, but I digress. In his later years he lived in a house in a real neighborhood with a yard too small for grain trailers.  So instead, he had three storage sheds, a garage, an office, and an entire master closet for his stuff.  

I'm sure you can imagine how overwhelming it was to clean out said "stuff."  My brothers and I did not inherit the same packrat gene and we grew jaded, tired, grumpy, and a wee bit sneaky as we worked to clear the home and yard. Facebook Marketplace and Goodwill quickly became our new best friends, because one man's junk is another man's treasure.  We made quick work selling, donating, or trashing those treasures with barely a thought.

One of the last things to tackle was my dad's closet.  I had already sorted my mom's tiny one, but dad's was A LOT more involved.  My youngest brother and I spent an entire day sorting, discarding, bagging, and organizing stuff that dad would never wear or use again.  He and my mom sat in bed holding court like a king and queen, afraid we might give away the crown jewels or something (insert eyeroll here).  We had to display EVERY item for his review.  It was hard for him to let go, but by that time he was only wearing pajamas and slippers. We gave away more than we kept, and still had a packed closet so we tackled other closet items including knee braces, heating pads, belts, hats, pillows, and boxes of miscellaneous items.  Then we moved to the more random items. Quilting square?  There it was bolted to the wall, I'm still not sure why...  Binoculars?  Cameras?  There were a few of those. Birthday cards from 1973?  Why yes, now that you mention it.  As we reached the top shelf with extra pillows and whatnot, we found two cardboard shipping boxes, each one holding wooden boxes.  They were unmarked and we could not figure out how to open them.  My parents had no clue what they were and by this point in a very long day we had lost our patience.  Those boxes went to Goodwill with a few carloads of clothes and other random junk, er, I mean "treasures".  We felt really, really good about all we accomplished that day, we were very self-congratulatory, which, in hindsight was a mistake.

Rewind to 10+ years ago when my parents made a will and pre-paid for their cremations through the Neptune Society.  The folders were stored in their safe and contained all required information, which made it quite simple when they passed because I only needed to make a phone call.  But there were 2 things neither my brothers nor I knew:  

1. We would need those mystery boxes.  

2. We would need a screwdriver.

The morning my mother passed, while I was full of emotion and exhausted from all that had transpired, I called the number in the folder.  My brother had arrived and was in the other room while I spoke to the Neptune Society representative.  She walked me through some of the details and then asked if I still had the urns.

In an instant everything shifted to super slo-mo.  I blinked, my eyes widened, I took a sharp breath, I asked her to excuse me as I muted the phone and then snapped out of it and yelled to my brother, "Todd, THOSE.WERE.URNS!!!!!"  He rushed in displaying the same look of wide-eyed panic (now permanently seared in my memory) and tore through the house hoping against hope that we had not actually donated my parents' urns.  But, well, you see, WE DID actually donate urns. Gulp. I got back on the phone and tearfully told the representative that we did not have the urns (I conveniently left out the fact the Goodwill had them, or some TikTok thrifter).  She was very kind and told me she had an extra one. That was a relief because as I scanned the link she sent for the urn catalog (yes, those exist) my stomach sank at the prices, and also at the new knowledge that you can now make jewelry out of your loved one's ashes.  I passed.  

A few weeks later I brought my mother's remains home in a lovely, cherrywood urn generously provided by the Neptune Society.  

Over the next four months my dad declined quickly and before I knew it I was calling the Neptune Society again.  This time, the representative was not as generous and told me they could put my dad's remains in a temporary box. Eek...for several months, two boxes sat in my house, one a lovely cherrywood box, the  other a not-so-lovely cardboard box.  I always felt bad for my dad, but, I mean, not too bad because he let us DONATE HIS URN, but still it was kind of pathetic to see the two of them sitting next to each other in vastly different containers.   

Fast forward to 11 months later.  We were in their beloved home state, at their favorite spot on earth. My brothers and I privately climbed up a hill, just the four of us, emotionally prepared to permanently say goodbye.  Well we tried. Turns out, YOU NEED A SCREWDRIVER TO OPEN URNS. We yelled cut and sent Todd, the youngest and fittest, down the hill to round up the stupid screwdriver (very thankful that my nephews always have some kind of tool on their person), THEN Action! We resumed our tearful, somber goodbyes. It was a fitting Clayton goodbye to two unique, quirky people. Even in the most terrible moment we found something to laugh about and I'm pretty sure my parents wouldn't have had it any other way. 

HOWEVER, I learned from this experience and want you to know that I TOO have pre-paid for my own cremation and have an urn.  It's in a cardboard shipping box, complete with a small screwdriver, with EVERY SINGLE SIDE clearly marked, in thick, black marker, that the box should NOT be discarded because IT IS MY URN.  

P.S. - This entire experience has inspired me to clean out a lot of my own "stuff" because I am fairly certain ain't nobody who wants to deal with it when I die.  And TBH I'm using the money to fund "Operation Robin's Retirement".  

**the title of this blog is credited to Tim Hightower who popped out with it after hearing this story.  I may need to hire him for all titles moving forward.