My late husband will be joining me on my move to Provincetown, MA.
Michael is 6’ 2”, young and agile, so he didn’t have to use the stepstool I offered to reach the top shelf in the bedroom of my apartment. “Got it,” he said as he cradled the box, tender as if rescuing a cat from the limbs of a tall tree.
“Careful,” I said. “I’m not sure the box is well sealed.”
I had asked my friend Michael for help because I was organizing the contents of my Chicago apartment for a move to Provincetown, MA. Both of my children live in the state and asked me – at my age of 85 -- to consider moving their way. PTOWN lured because it’s a diverse artist’s colony, and I imagined myself hobnobbing with writers, painters, and creative types like my own nonbinary offspring. And since one of them had a home there, with an extra bedroom and ocean view, it upstaged Boston.
My second husband’s ashes have rested in the UPS box in six different places I have lived since his death in 2012. These were the remains of his remains. His golfing buddies took a cupful and scattered them at Chicago’s Jackson Park club.
And without revealing to the owners who purchased our home after Tommy died in hospice, I sprinkled another cupful in the backyard.
Michael walked slowly to the kitchen, then placed it on the kitchen counter. Now that I replay that scene in my head, I wish we could have added music. Perhaps Johnny Hartman singing In This World of Ordinary People, I’m Glad There is You. That was the song a tape recorder played January 13, 1998, as my children walked Tommy down the aisle.in the wedding chapel of Treasure Island at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas
Fortunately, the box had survived its various travels, but alas, the contents had not. Upon unsealing, we discovered a layer of grey dust covering the floral cardboard box, as well as all the other packed mementos.
Along with Tommy’s ashes, I had stowed his wallet, which on its own, opened to our wedding photo. Although hazy with its covering, there was no mistaking our happiness. Me, age 60, Tommy 63, a second marriage for both, we had won the lottery.
His headphones, that he wore regularly on his runs along the lakeshore’s park, and his watch halted after being admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, were grey now, mourning their absent owner.
While I can’t remember placing these items there, I was pleased to see them again, but dismayed at their somber condition.
“Hand me a paper towel,” Michael said. He was a physician preparing to conduct major surgery. “No worries, I had to do this with my mother’s ashes,” he said.
As he lifted each item, I provided their biographies. “I tried to get Tommy to replace his wallet,” I said. “But Tommy had owned it for 20 years and didn’t see any reason to abandon it.”
But it wasn’t only sentiment that prevented Tommy from upgrading the wallet. Before we met and married, he had been living a simple life, and never saw a need to match his wealthier new wife’s stuff.
After Michael had finished wiping each item in the box, I stopped him from resealing. “I want to add these,” I said.
As if I were placing it around the neck of a winner, I nestled a ribbon Tommy had won in a marathon. His wedding ring joined in, too. These newcomers told stories about their owner.
Although diagnosed with Frontal Temporal Degeneration three years before he died, Tommy continued to work out at our neighborhood YMCA. Three times a week, he lifted weights, and jogged on a treadmill. There were no longer marathons, but he needed to be a strongman until his last breath. The ribbon confirmed that.
His gold wedding ring, which matched mine, that we had brought for $25 each at Service Merchandise, now rested on a gold chain. It had been too large for my finger, so the chain caring for it sufficed until both slipped off my neck in a swimming pool. Now it would be reunited with the groom.
“Do you think I should scatter Tommy’s ashes in the Atlantic?” I asked Michael. Although swimming wasn’t one of my spouse’s regular activities, I thought he might appreciate the grandeur of the scene.
“Why don’t you wait until you get to PTOWN,” Michael said. “Maybe you’ll decide to let it rest in peace with all his belongs? Maybe you’ll find another tall shelf where Tommy will be undisturbed.”
I thought about that. What would Tommy want?
“Good idea,” I said. “I could think of him still watching over me. But now he’s spiffy, cleaned up, refreshed for our new experience. With his remains still here, instead of scattered in the ocean, I can imagine him running along the shoreline, waving to me. Happy we’re still together.”
After Michael left, I sat down in my armchair, rested my legs on the ottoman, and closed my eyes. Then, conjuring up once again our Las Vegas wedding, I recited aloud: I take thee Tommy as my lawful wedded spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, in sickness and health, to love and cherish until death do us part”.
In my mind’s eye, though, I drew a strike line through the last four words, and replaced them with “forever.”
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