BeeGee Comes Home

So I rallied myself to drive to the cremation office and picked up the ashes of BeeGee. The attendant was very "sorry for your loss" over and over and gave me the black gift bag tied with a ribbon, with a metal tag on it with BeeGee's name. He asked if I wanted to sit for awhile in privacy in the inner office. I said no. What am I going to do in the inner office? How will I know when I was over?

So I left, but before leaving the parking lot, I made the mistake of looking through the bag. The wooden box with BeeGee's name on it was there, which made me feel oddly that I needed to get her home right away and not to stop to do other things because she was in the car now.

The paperwork was various cards with maudlin poetry on it, including a little note supposedly from BeeGee telling me not to mourn because she was young and happy where she was now and running around, having a great time, and would see me again. That, of course, immediately made me weep copiously even though I knew it was a computer-generated card everyone got. There was a baby-book type folder with pages I could fill out about Favorite Food and Favorite Things To Do and other memories about BeeGee. Filling that book out is probably a good, healing activity when there are children grieving. But when I got to the last page, I recoiled in part horror and part crushing grief because they had shaved part of BeeGee's fur and put it in a little plastic bag taped to the last page.

This is our first cremated cat. My husband will probably never look inside the bag. Even a month after, he said he wasn't ready, even though his mother's cremated remains are in a jar on the shelf next to where he watches television. I put the bag in the back of the closet, and one day, probably after I am also in a jar on his bookcase, maybe he will be cleaning out the closet and find it and read the poem then.