Fifty Fun Things To Do With A Dead Guy

We have a very strange sense of humour in my family, and our own way of celebrating.

When Daddy died a year ago, we had him cremated. As a family, we thought long and hard about what to do with the remains of the person we all loved most in the world. What we came up with may seem disrespectful to some, but feels so incredibly right to us.

Fifty Fun Things To Do With A Dead Guy.

Daddy was dedicated to the Scouts movement, and his favourite part of the year was when they would get out the potato cannons. Last summer, Mum threw Daddy a birthday party, a chance for everyone who had mourned to come together in joy, and celebrate the person my father was. The climax of the night involved forty people driving to a nearby lake, where Mum poured everyone a miniature "Dark'n'Dirty", Daddy's favourite drink. We all raised a glass to David, and then we launched some of his ashes in to the stratosphere inside a hollowed out potato.

To us, and the people who loved him, this is respect.

That was The First Fun Thing To Do With A Dead Guy. Since then, we have taken him with us on family retreats, we have taken him kite flying (and oh my God, how that man loved to fly kites), we have spoken aloud to whatever container of ashes we had with us at the time, said ashes usually housed inside his Tim Horton's coffee mug. It seems completely normal to us.

When Carleton got married three weeks ago, Mum had a small container of Daddy's ashes with her during the ceremony. Carleton knew about this ahead of time, and was very glad to know Daddy would be at his wedding. Ai, on the other hand, was kept completely in the dark about this because, frankly, she had never met us before, and we didn't feel that on her wedding day, a good opening line would be, "And here's the dead person!"



Sadly, we are all dealing with the news that Ai's mother is in very poor health; very unexpectedly, Ai and Carleton feel the need to go to Japan in two weeks. Carleton is excited to meet his new family, but understandably stressed for Ai that it is under such circumstances. I can hear in his voice how much he already loves this mother-in-law he has never met, this mother-in-law who doesn't speak English. He just wants to Get To His Family.

Despite this valley of shadow we are all walking through, over a woman we have never met, he made my heart sing when he said, "Tell Mum to send me some of Daddy's ashes. I have to take him to Japan with me."