Spreading ashes is not the same as shown in the movies - 5 things I wish I'd known before

Our knees knocked together as we rode the train to Glasgow, the iPad propped on the foldable table in front of us with a film on. I sipped my Irn Bru and looked out the window while my younger brother slept beside me, head lolling, his takeaway coffee having failed him. 

It had started as a sunny day but the further north we got it became mistier and greyer and I felt more at peace, though I had the kind of trepidation in my stomach when you know that you’re doing something monumental.

I glanced anxiously at my suitcase in the luggage rack, making sure it was still there. Making sure he was still there. We were finally taking dad back home.

It had been ten years since dad had passed away, and we were journeying to his birth place to ceremoniously spread his ashes on what would have been his 59th birthday. 

When you see ashes being spread in the movies, it always seems so easy and graceful, as a well-timed gust catches the fine powder in its path, causing it to soar and twirl in front of the mourning grievers in a beautiful spiral. 

It was not like that for us.

1. Firstly, we had to find somewhere suitable to spread them. Him. He had lived in Possilpark, but this had a reputation for being kind of a rough area, and I’m not sure he would have been jumping at the chance to spend eternity there. We also weren’t sure what certain permissions you were supposed to have to spread ashes in a public place, but in the end we decided on one of the main parks in the city that had a flowing river and benches on high rises looking out over the skyline.

The sticky September air clung to our bodies as we steadily trudged up the embankments, clutching dad in one arm and a carrier bag of ice cream and cigarettes in the other. We sat on a bench at the very top of the park, gazing down, Cameron smoking, me dripping melted ice lolly down the front of my top, thinking, what now?

2. Secondly, we had to decide the right moment. The park was quite busy on this warm weekend, with gangs of friends picnicking on the grass, families with squealing children running along the path, and dogs on leads stopping to sniff at each bench. We had to wait for a quiet moment, where it could be just the two of us and no-one could interrupt us or judge. But every time somebody got up from their bench and moved along, another person would take their place. We sat there for what felt like a painfully long time, growing more awkward and anxious by the moment, until we decided to go up past the trees behind the bench into a slightly more private clearing, and spread most of the ashes there.

3. Thirdly, I hadn’t expected there to be so much of him. My brother, half-sister and I had all gotten miniature urns with some of dad’s ashes in when he passed away, and she had also used a section for a memorial where she and her daughters could go to visit their grandad. But there was still a significant amount left in the paper urn I carried with me now. My dad had notoriously been a rather short man, and the ashes always looked like such a small amount in the films, like a couple of handfuls at least, so I hadn’t expected there to be mounds and mounds of them left.

I would prise off the urn’s lid from time to time and look down at him inside, thinking about how I could just grasp him in my hands if I wanted to. Now we would be holding his body, for the very last time. 

4. Fourth, the ashes were also so much thicker than I had anticipated. They weren’t a light airy powder, they looked like coarse grey sand which contrasted against the startling white of pale, ground up bone fragments. We tried to tip some out of the urn and up into the air, but no whimsical breeze came and carried them whirling down the hill. Instead, the heavy dust just fell onto the ground. We did this a few times, dumping lumps of white powder onto the floor, feeling as ungracious as possible. 

5. Fifth, it looks really suspicious. We decided to also put some of dad into the main river that ran through the park, to let him flow along on adventures and see other parts of the city. As we walked along to the river we had to avoid a couple of police officers on a routine walk around the park, sure that we would get in trouble for disposing of human remains without any proper permissions. 

Things got even worse at the river. Glad we had given the officers the slip, we proceeded to dump what looked like a highly suspicious white powder into the water, wondering what the mom’s with their pushchairs and the couples hand in hand thought of our obvious drug evidence disposal.

It was something I had built up in my head for so many years, expecting a big movie moment where I would tearfully say a few words and we would watch him float away on the air, never to be seen again. It hadn't been anything like what I imagined or what I have seen on screen, but it wouldn’t have been like dad if it had gone that perfectly. 

We dusted our hands to remove the last traces of him stuck to our skin’s oils, disposed of the empty paper urn, and made our way back home, one passenger down.

Written by Ally McLaren
Editor

Hi, I’m Ally, Editor of This Modern Struggle Magazine.

You may have seen my writing in Mouthy Magazine or Darling Magazine. I currently work in Marketing and PR and do freelance copywriting on the side. I also have experience in journalism and feature writing for women’s magazines and national press.

When I’m not writing you can find me eating pizza, stroking my cat and watching true crime documentaries.

I started this magazine for all the fellow strugglers who feel the same way that I do; like everyone else has it all figured out and you just don’t know what you’re doing in life.