Ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust.........

If the cemetery-man won’t do it, the son must. (iPhone photo by BobbaLew.)

“At least we didn’t dump her ashes in my trashcan,” I said to the good ladies boarding my dog.
How do I blog such a serious event after making a remark like that?
“You hafta understand,” I said. “She declared we’d never last a year.”
My wife’s mother died about about a year ago. She’d made 100, and thereby outlasted her daughter, my wife, who only made 68.
When I noted my mother-in-law’s ashes were in the car, and we were about to bury her, the ladies became sad and said they were sorry.
I broke them up with my “trashcan” comment.
“So how many years were you married?” they asked.
“44,” I said. “I think I changed her mind.”
“Mother could be very judgmental,” my brother-in-law commented.
“Yeah,” I said. “First time she met me, she growled at me.”
I wasn’t the blond-haired cherub desired by “Mother.” It was like “Look what the cat dragged in” — a complete and utter scumbag; similar to the same badmouthing I got from my own parents.
My wife’s mother met and was impressed by Blondie, deciding he was approved.
My wife-to-be had other ideas. Blondie dated her once, and returned to our college at 100 mph in his car.
Not only was Blondie a creep; he was also a fearsome “lead-foot.”
Who my wife-to-be liked was ME. She liked the way I thought; my observations that questioned superior-mouths.
This was the same thing that made college so revelatory. Adult authority-figures valued and solicited my opinions — instead of automatically declaring me rebellious and disgusting.
My wife-to-be was after me the whole time I was in college, although I never knew until my senior year. She was very shy.
We continued seeing each other after graduation — we were in the same class.
We married a year later. This seemed to make her mother angrier, or so it seemed. —The fact I thought my wife could be attractive, whereas “Mother” raised her to be a frump.
There were wars over glasses, the fact I thought my wife looked prettier without them, whereas “Mother” was used to her wearing them.
After a while my wife got contacts.
We passed a year, then the years piled up.
Then my wife developed cancer. That may be what changed her mother’s mind.
The fact it was always me driving her to cancer-treatments. I wanted to keep her alive.
She’d been the BEST friend I ever had, and after my childhood I sorely needed that.
She stayed with me despite my being half-insane = royally messed up.
When my wife finally died, it seemed I was approved after all.
Her mother was very glad to see me for her 100th birthday. “What am I doing here?” I asked. “Linda was the one supposed to last.”
“Linda” was my wife’s name.
“What am I doing here?” her mother crowed. “Linda died before me.”
It seemed the growling was over. My hair wasn’t blond — in fact, it’s no longer brown. Yet I seemed to pass muster.
My wife’s parents were from a tiny town in the rural outback near Corning, NY.
They moved to FL years ago, buying a house.
My wife’s father died of a stroke in 1989.
Even though they lived In FL, they long ago purchased cemetery lots in a town in NY near where they had lived.
My wife’s mother flew her father’s body up here to bury in that cemetery. She decided she wanted to be buried next to him when she died.
Digging a burial-hole up here in NY is near impossible during Winter. Her ashes were set aside.
My wife’s brother also lives in FL, and drove up here with the ashes.
The cemetery was difficult to find, and the cemetery-attendant wouldn’t answer his phone, or no longer existed.
My brother-in-law had to do something. He had driven up here from FL, and returning with the ashes seemed silly.
He decided to bury her ashes himself. We tossed shovels into my car, and set out for the faraway cemetery.
“What if a sherif-dippity arrests us? What if some neighbor blows us in?” I asked.
“Two geezers are in Hope Cemetery exhuming a body.”
Brother-in-law dug a small hole about a foot deep next to his father’s grave, and placed the small plastic bag of ashes in the hole.
Sod was replaced.
We stood somberly and brother-in-law read from my wife’s Bible:
“In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
No one bothered us. We weren’t arrested.
Perhaps no one noticed, although it seemed a neighbor did.
The moving finger having writ, moves on.