My pile of bones without a home
Why I care about having a beautiful and sacred place to remember our beloved dead.
My Pile of Bones without a Home
Why I care about having a beautiful and sacred place to remember our beloved dead.
by Nicola Finch
I came to an understanding when I was quite young, that grief and loss were part of life.
My mother grieved the death of her father.
I knew into the depth of my being that her grief was a big part of who she was. And that she had a magnificent capacity for love.
My mom's dad; Harold Fletcher, wore a beguiling smile in the little black and white photograph that sat on my mother's dresser. And that was all I knew of him. That photograph and her stories.
Harold died from a brain tumor when my Mom was 16. He was her whole world.
As he neared death, they took him into the hospital. I learned that Harold asked to be propped up on his last trip past the lake he loved, and they hadn't done that. They were worried it would cause him pain.
Harold was buried in a graveyard on a hillside in the Okanagan Valley. He was buried with his feet pointing uphill, and this forever disturbed my dear mom.
The theme of that story was regret.
I learned that death and disposition can and often should be done differently.
I didn't grow up on a farm. Our family wasn't big on pets. My experience of death and grief was a visceral thing and it was allowed to exist. It came to the table and we heard it's stories.
Generational grief woven into family stories is akin to learning from your mother how to make pastry or a decent loaf of bread. It's all about repetition and memory.
I remember the deaths of my granddad, my uncles, my Nana and my grandmother. I remember when my mom's best friend died and when my teenage sisters boyfriend was killed in a car accident.
My brother took his own life when he was just 29. My mom died when she was 58.
My dad was 70 when he died. My brother Michael's suicide was my Munch moment.
A shock of primal, overwhelming horror. His death was my Scream.
Michael was the shining star of our family of six. He was extremely intelligent, quick witted, funny, passionate, a talented writer and artist and our best beloved. When he took his own life it ripped our hearts out, broke us wide open and none of us would ever be the same.
We would do our grieving together as a family. We cleaned his blood soaked apartment together. We sorted his belongings together.
We made the phone calls. We wrote his funeral service. My dad built his sons pine box in the underground parking of the apartment building mom and dad managed. We strapped that long tall coffin on top of Mike's lime green mini and delivered it to the funeral home. We tucked precious notes and little gifts in the pine box alongside our beautiful boy.
We sent out invitations and delivered the service. We sang the songs.
We sent Michael into the fire. He came back to us as bone and ash.
We sewed small leather pouches to share his ashes, and to keep some.
We hired a boat and scattered most of his ashes out beyond English Bay.
We did everything the best way we knew how.
We did our mom proud too when her time came.
And our dad. Cath; well, that was difficult.
And There Is. No. Memorial. For any of them.
No single place to visit the memory or the bones of my beloved brother or my mother or my father. And last year I added my sister Catherine to my pile of bones without a home.
That's my impetus.
To create a beautiful place of remembrance. For Natural Burials and for cremated remains.
For my family and for yours.
Contact
Nicola Finch PO Box 4744, Williams Lake, BC, Canada V2G2V7
Email: nicola@greenburialbc.ca or nicola@deathtalk.ca
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