cremation | Sherry Lachelle Travels

A few weeks ago I took my mother’s ashes to the cemetery where my Aunt (her sister) is buried and spread them on her grave. My mother died a year ago from Cancer at the age of 78. She was one of eleven children born into poverty and she was closest to this sister.

My father passed away in 2006 from Cancer, my grandfather (his father) passed away in 2004 (at the age of 100) from old age, and my father’s mother passed away in the 1980’s at the approximate age of 80. At one point, I had all of their ashes. A few years ago I took their ashes to the Voice of America Park in West Chester (Cincinnati), Ohio and found a spot down a road without anyone around to sprinkle them. The reason I chose the Voice of America Park was because my Grandfather had been one of the first engineers with them over in Germany in the 50’s. He and my Grandmother probably would have preferred being spread in Germany, but I didn’t know when I would make it back there. I was stationed there when I was in the Army back in the late 70’s.

My Grandfather led a very motivated life…was a talented Violinist in addition to his career as an Engineer, and other interesting endeavors/inventions. If you’d like to read more about him, I have a post here that I wrote over a year ago.

Anyway, back to my Mother. She believed she had a ghost that lived with her for about 10 years, until she moved in with me back in 2008. She had some ghost detection people come out and spend the night to see if they could pick up anything with their equipment, and they did register some activity. She told me before she passed, that if I felt something brush against me, that it would be her. A few weeks after she passed, I was sitting here at my computer and felt something brush against my leg. I didn’t think anything of it, just took my hand to brush at the spot. Well…it happened again and then it dawned on me. Have any of you had experiences with ghosts?

Back to her ashes. I’m sure that cemeteries have a rule against doing what I did, but I couldn’t think of a place my Mother would have rather been. I asked her before she died and she said to keep her for a while and then put her where I thought best. Having never visited my Aunt’s grave (she died when I was nine years old), I found online what Section she was in and the general location. This particular cemetery is very large, so once I parked by the Section, it took about 20 minutes of walking around to find her grave. Some grounds employees drove by me in a golf cart and I tried to keep her bag of ashes cradled in my arm, so they wouldn’t stop to investigate. I have two brothers, but I’m not in contact with one of them and the other one hasn’t asked about her ashes, so I didn’t think he’d be interested in accompanying me.

I also would like to be cremated. I think it’s a waste of space and money to put dead people in expensive boxes and bury them. When I die, I’d like people to celebrate my life if there is a funeral. Make it a party!