Pear Ashes

Death is strange. You feel so far away from it, and there’s such a disconnect when you’re young; then, someone you love is taken from you, and everything you know comes crashing down around you.

I’ve led a very sheltered life. Not that I haven’t had struggles, of course; we all have those. I just, never really experienced true loss until I was older. As a youngster, death had never introduced itself to me. While some might say I was lucky, when death finally did stretch it’s grip to my family, I was far from prepared.

I was in the garden with my father. He was proudly showing me the beautiful strawberries he’d grown, and I had just indulged in the sweetest bite, when my mother rushed into the garden, her cheeks flush with frenzy.

“Dad’s in the hospital…we need to go.”

The next few minutes were a whirlwind of activity. We changed, secured the chickens, comforted the cat, and then were gone.

The drive wasn’t silent, but it was strained. None of us knew what to expect, and frankly, none of us really knew how to act. My grandfather…well, he was not a nice man. None of us wanted to verbalize the possibility of him passing, but none of us wanted to be ignorant to reality either. We wanted to be sad, but cruel memories of abuse made us feel stupid for empathizing…it was very painful and confusing.

Thanks to dad’s driving, we made it in record time. My grandmother was already at the hospital, having called mom before leaving. We then contacted my brother, who was away at university, and my aunt and cousins, who had been estranged from the family for a long while. Everyone came together to say goodbye; one, big, dysfunctional family.

Well, wouldn’t you know it? He pulled through! Gave us all a big scare, then was sitting up, spewing out insults at us by the next week. I guess you could say, for a while, life was business as usual.

It wasn’t long before we noticed however, my grandfather was not the same. He couldn’t remember the day to day events. He became paranoid of his belongings, and became convinced we were trying to take them. The stories he told became repetitive, to the point of having the same conversation five times within five minutes. His anger became worse, as did his resentment and verbal abuse. It took only a year before he was back in the hospital; this time, never to leave.

The first time I heard him talk about God, I knew his time with us was coming to an end. I’d watched him argue for hours with religious people, telling them their views and beliefs were insane garbage. Yet here he was, singing the praises of a God he’d never believed in. While I did cry, I still hadn’t fully processed what it was going to be like; I had no idea, even for someone so mean, how damn much it would still hurt to lose him.

Then he started asking about his pear tree. His stupid pear tree, that he’d dug up and stolen from some poor soul’s yard and brought back to his. We all told him it would never fruit, he’d stressed it too much; but he never gave up, and there he was, in his delirium, asking about that fucking pear tree.

“Has it bloomed? Has it fruited?” We all told him honestly; no. At that point, after what he’d put us all through our entire lives, none of us felt obligated to comfort him with a simple lie. A decision I think many of us regretted when we got the phone call.

When you’ve never experienced it, even when you anticipate it, you can’t even fathom what the death of a loved one will be like. The agony, the sorrow, the intense, overwhelming mix of emotions; it’s like your body completely shields you from it until it actually happens. It makes sense, denial being the first stage of grief; your body can’t comprehend the emotions it’s feeling, so it attempts to reject them.

We all cried; with sadness, anger, regret, guilt, and we lamented the relationship we all never had. None of us could lie about the man he was; but, we mourned the man he could have been, and remembered the good times, as seldom as they may have been. Whatever anger, bitterness and resentment he held onto in his life was gone now; he was no longer that person. He was at peace; we could be too.

It was a simple cremation. My grandfather was never one for spending money - unless it was on alcohol - so we felt it would be in poor taste to spend a lot on a funeral, which he had always been very clear he never wanted. Instead, as a family, we slipped his ashes into an old rum jar, at which time my grandmother commented,

“That’s the least he ever fought me about anything.”

We laughed and cried. Not long after, I asked my grandmother for a scoop of ashes, as I’d had an idea of how to, shall we say, pay homage to my late grandfather.

I added the ashes to the soil of his tree; and wouldn’t you know it? That year, for the first time, we got a pear. One tiny, lonely pear. For me, this was my closure. He was happy, and everything would be okay. There were no hard feelings.

Death will never be easy; whether it’s the death of someone you’re close with, or someone who was cruel to you. It’s never expected, it’s never routine, and it’s never easy. But, with every death you experience, take solace in knowing, that’s a relationship that you formed. That’s a special connection you created with somebody. Something that can’t be bought, or stolen, or destroyed; every pain from every death means you’ve established something irreplaceable.

In all honesty…what could be more meaningful than that?