Coming Home

"I brought your father home today" my mother proclaimed with an air of excitement.  "I didn't think it would make such a difference, but it does.  It's very comforting."  She found a nice decorative box among her belongings for my father's ashes.  She placed it next to the fireplace so they can be together when she sits on the couch to read or watch TV.  She can see him from her place at the kitchen table, when she's aware of her widow status the most.  My mother wanted a partner in life and in death, so she never embraced my father's life long wish to be cremated.  His decision left her without a significant other in her burial plot, an issue they disputed often.  But even in death my father appeased my mother.  Weeks ago he acquiesced to being embalmed so there could be a wake with an open casket, and a body for the funeral.  Then, my mother told him, he would be cremated and we would carry out his desire to spread his ashes in the desert, at the ocean, and near his mother in Seattle.  I always knew this was the only way my father would finally leave NJ. 

My father's arthritic bones made him loath the cold winter months.  When my parents retired over a decade ago he dreamed of moving to a warmer climate, a house on the Chesapeake or somewhere in California.  Over and over again, my mother won this argument since she would never leave her family and friends in NJ.  My father continued to dream, "one day, I'm going to get out of this place."  In recent weeks he still uttered this phrase, and I teased him, "There is only one way you're going to leave The Garden State."  He laughed, silently acknowledging the inevitable truth.  And yet, even in death he remains in NJ.  My mother knows at some point we will split his ashes and adhere to his wishes, but for now she wants to keep him whole and enjoy his company.