Fifty-five dollars.
Shipping included.
Every experience, every emotion, every moment of joy and sadness and anger.
Every memory.
Every fantastic hair day.
Fifty-five dollars.
All of it ends up in a box that cost fifty-five dollars.
It’s my Dad’s Celebration of Life this coming Wednesday.
As well as the interment of his cremated remains.
I do not begrudge funeral homes making a buck.
They provide an essential and amazing service for many.
But unless I wanted to be haunted by my father’s frugal angry ghost there was no way in hell I was going to pay $500 dollars for something that would be stuck in the ground never to be seen again (barring a massive flood and/or zombie apocalypse).
So, fifty-five dollars.
On Amazon.
Yes, yes… Amazon are awful but seeing as my Grandmother famously picked out a lovely pewter vessel from a local shop for about $200 in 1997 for my grandfather’s remains… and it was too small… I wasn’t taking any chances.
1 cubic inch per (when they were alive) pound.
Required cubic inches entered in search bar and confirmed in product description.
Unless my Dad really packed on the pounds in the couple of days between when we left him for dead (literally) in the hospital and the crematorium, this fifty-five dollar box offering 345 cubic inches of luxurious space should have lots of room.
Dad liked to stretch out.
This box - my father’s final resting place - has really brought something to clarity for me.
Life is where its at.
While you’re living you get to make fabulous mistakes and fix them.
While you’re living you get to go places, do things, and wear cool and/or comfortable shoes.
While you’re living you get to taste, feel, see, hear, and use whatever senses are available to you.
While you’re living you get to love and hate and love again.
While you’re living you get to help make life better for others.
You get to live.
That’s what has dawned on me.
That’s the whole point.
You have a life.
Take care of yourself and wring out every last drop.
Because it doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, where you’ve been, or how great your hair looks...
one day you end up as sand in a box that cost fifty-five dollars on Amazon.
Get living.
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You were very fortunate to have a Dad you write of so lovingly. May his memory be for a blessing. Death is, indeed, our best reminder to live while alive.
We are probably a dreadful family but my dad didn’t quite fit into the box my brother had lovingly crafted for him. Unbeknownst to my brother, a bit of him went into the lake and a bit more on the golf course. We buried the rest in the box beside mom. That was dad all over . Life is for living ! money is for spending! From the photo it looks as if your dad knew that. ( well maybe not the money is for spending part)