Ashes to Dust

/ Richard R. Barron

A popular joke on the Interwebs right now goes like this: “One of my favorite hobbies as a child was making sand castles with my grandfather, until my mom took the urn away.”

Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, laps up pond water on a walk a couple of years ago. He never turned down a big drink on our daily walks.
Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, laps up pond water on a walk a couple of years ago. He never turned down a big drink on our daily walks.

The reason I thought about this recently is that a friend of mine asked me if she could spread the ashes from my Irish wolfhound Hawken, who died last summer, in the pond on my patch. She liked this idea because Hawken loved to wade into the pond up to his shoulders and drink his fill when I walked him.

I said sure, of course. But she and I don’t agree on that value of that action. When she was spreading the ashes, she smiled and said something like, “He’s at home now.”

But ashes are only ashes. Hawken isn’t in there. He isn’t in the smoke. He wasn’t even in his body the moment after he died.

I recognize the value of ashes as a memorial, and that many people, maybe even most people, think of ashes or bodies or personal objects as being part of the living creature they once were.

So whose ashes are these? You could put them under a microscope or x-ray them or bombard them with neutrons. You could gather for a seance over them. You could dust your morning Cheerios with them. You could shout at them in your loudest voice, or whisper to them under a lunar eclipse. Yet none of these actions will tell you anything about who or what these ashes once were. But if you must know, from left to right, these are Pam's ashes, Hawken's ashes, and some beach sand from Corpus Christi.
So whose ashes are these? You could put them under a microscope or x-ray them or bombard them with neutrons. You could gather for a seance over them. You could dust your morning Cheerios with them. You could shout at them in your loudest voice, or whisper to them under a lunar eclipse. Yet none of these actions will tell you anything about who or what these ashes once were. But if you must know, from left to right, these are Pam’s ashes, Hawken’s ashes, and some beach sand from Corpus Christi.