Human Remains - Dec 18 2020

 

Human Remains

Dec 18 2020

I remember scattering the ashes.

Except they didn't scatter.

There were the tiny fragments of bone

that unceremoniously fell

from my out-stretched hand.

The dark gritty sand

which was coarser than expected,

and heavier than the wind

so it landed in clumps.

And then the fine grey stuff

that was more airy than I'd envisioned,

blowing back at me

in the fitful breeze

and coating my arm

in its sticky white substance.

So a parting ritual

that should have been reverent and reflective

was hardly that.

I can thinking of nothing more intimate

than touching with your bare hand

the last remnants of someone you loved,

then closing your grip

and holding tight.

But human remains

are nothing more than chemistry;

it's memory

where lived lives are kept.

And it's not the scattering

that actually matters,

but the knowing

that when the end comes

they will honour your wish.

That you will be returned to the forest

the sea

the mountain top

and spend eternity there,

a part of nature, the cycle of life,

from birth to death

and back again.

They calculate

that the stuff of a human body

would cost no more than 200 dollars

in its elemental form.

Which is all these ashes are,

a roaring fire

once the fuel is exhausted

and the flame goes out.

So stir the ashes, when they're still warm.

Then let them smoulder

in the blackened pit

until even the ground is cold;

a dark scar

in the forest floor

in a small sunlit clearing,

where a sapling will soon appear

and a tree eventually grow.

I was listening to a Radiolab episode ( https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/ashes-lawn ) about an AIDs demonstration in the early 90s in which protesters breached a perimeter of mounted police surrounding the White House and threw the ashes of their loved ones over the fence. It reminded me of that hilarious scene in The Big Lebowski where John Goodman's character – the very self-serious Walter Sobchak – tries scattering Donny's ashes in a strong wind. So while I apologize for writing another poem on the theme of death, it came about not out of morbid preoccupation but rather from an unintended encounter in daily life.

I had always imagined human remains post-cremation were like wood ash after a fire: relatively uniform, flaky, light. But apparently they aren't. I've never scattered ashes, so I googled to check my accuracy.

Humans have always had valued rituals around death. But I'm not particular what happens to the inanimate stuff of my dead body. After all, as the poem says, it's merely chemistry. Although, since we still need to be disposed of in some way or other, I would much prefer an environmental burial: in my case, an unembalmed body in a simple shroud placed in a shallow grave at the foot of a tree. If cremation is necessary, then the same for my ashes.

You can find many estimates for the elemental value of a human body. If, instead, you use the black market price of its organs, then this number would be substantially higher. And then, of course, it will change with markets and inflation. But the first estimate I came across on Google was $160.00 (although inflation may have made it higher since it was originally set), and since “no more than 200 dollars” worked nicely in the poem, I kept it. Whatever the number, the point is clear: as a chemistry set, the body isn't worth much! But then, even though an important part of our sense of self comes from being embodied, we are not our bodies; we are minds and souls.