I put the idea to Xβs son. It would be appropriate, I said. And it would be righteous. So he gave us a cigar tube containing some of Xβs ashes to spread on the sacred river where we once went to tell our best lies. βCome on, gentlemen,β I insisted. βFuel up the utes. This is a pilgrimage.β
We travelled to the river and stood upwind as I spoke gentle words about our friend, and uncorked the tube and upended it and shook it β¦ and shook it again β¦ and β¦ X was always an impulsive man, and we were expecting him to erupt earthward with reverse volcanic vigor.
But nothing came out of the tube. Instead of hearing obsequies for X, I was fusilladed with snidery. Once again, I had lost a friend, seemed to be the gist of it. To this day, none of us know where the ashes went. Or if there were any to begin with. Whether a joke was played, or a mistake was made. Maybe our teary eyes missed a smoky vestige of our mate as it floated away on the breeze. Suspicion weaves its glacial way among us still β but nothing is said about it now.
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About 70 per cent of Australians are cremated, leaving many of us with an ashes tale to tell. I know of four siblings who drove for a day to launch their fatherβs ashes off a mountain heβd loved. They got there without him. βDidnβt you bring him?β βNo. You had the urn.β βIs it still at Mumβs?β βYou dropkick. You left him at Mumβs? Sheβll use him as cat litter.β
His ashes now abide on a shelf in a garage awaiting the sacred safari that will end on a caressing wind. But itβs hard to co-ordinate four busy lives, and my guess is heβll end up in landfill with asbestos, mattresses and lemon rinds.
Who hasnβt felt that βOhhh β¦ shiiitβ, slo-mo burst of guilt when opening a cupboard and finding a forgotten urn? A brother youβd sworn to reunite with a lake, river, beach or forest β still cooped up with Twister and Monopoly and the 500-piece jigsaw of a castle on The Danube in which a line of Dukes has doubtless festered? Tons of our fricasseed beloved must rest on dark shelves in this town.
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A friendβs father was a golfer of note and had asked that his ashes be spread on the ninth green at this countryβs most prestigious club. The club informed him that, even though the ex-member was a tip-top chap with a single-digit handicap and a gunbarrel drive, its course was not a repository for human remains. My friend took the refusal in his stride β or his strides, really. While enjoying his next round, he wriggled and waggled his way across the ninth green as he shook his dadβs ashes from his trouser legs like Steve McQueen sprinkling tunnel dirt around Stalag Luft 3 in The Great Escape.
And why should our hearts be subject to the whims of our bureaucracies? Melbourneβs Royal Botanical Gardens has long been a spiritual home for Blundstoned suburban green thumbs, and many gardeners on winterβs cusp express a desire that their ashes garnish a bloom or leaven a bed in that approximate Eden.
