TheBanyanTree: One Day, Two Funerals

[Monique Colve]

First of all,they were ash dispersal, so maybe I shouldn't call them funerals.

My stepmom died at 60, and my father kept her ashes in a fancy urn in his closet for the next twenty-something years. When he died, remembering his wife's funeral when his four surviving kids had taken on the cost of paying for her funeral, he had prepaid for his cremation, and then we had two sets of ashes. 

Sometime later, Jeff, the only one of the 7 of us who was the child of both my stepmom and my dad, decided on a ceremony to disperse the ashes. There had been no service for my dad 







When my stepmother died at the early age of 60, it was a shock to us all. For 20 years my dad had been predicted to die soon, any day now. He'd had 2 heart attacks and a stroke, or vice versa. Whatever it was, it did not kill him. It did cause him to take early retirement from his brother's electrical supply, but after a while dad just started his own cabinet business. It was easier than driving back and forth from Big Bear Lake to Lynwood, which was an excessively long drive.

Her heart exploded in the middle of the night, and my dad followed the ambulance in his own vehicle. A block from the hospital the ambulance lights turned off and it slowed down. My dad knew what that meant, so there was no surprise when he got to the hospital. I can see him there, all alone, being told what he already knew, sitting in the plastic uncomfortable seats. He would have called Mike first, his oldest surviving son, or Patty, his oldest daughter. Someone called me in the morning, hundreds of miles away. I flew down that day and was picked up by Mike and his wife.

Her funeral was big due to her status in the committee. People stood outside to hear the service. It was appropriately ostentatious, which she would have loved. 

I had helped my dad write something, but he couldn't bear to stand and read it, so I agreed to 

My father Merritt 
Monique
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