Ashes to Ashes

By Harrison Minnikin

Is this technically cannibalism? What I’m about to do?
Surely not.
No.
It’s just F-U-C-K-ed up.
But at the same time it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful, hell it’s downright poetic. Does that make it okay though?
The voice of a wearied businessman rouses me from my considerations.
“Hey, buddy, just a cappuccino please, three shots.”
I turn my miserable gaze from my apron to him, unresponsive for a moment. I can’t do it. Not to this guy. If he found out he’d probably sue me and this shitty diner. In New York City, the contact details of people’s lawyers are just above their families numbers in the favourites menu.
I want to ask him, “That’ll be $4.50 sir, oh and also would you mind if I poured some of my grandmother’s ashes into your drink? No extra charge of course.”
Instead, being the coward that I am, I just say, “That’ll be $4.50 sir.” No further enquires as to whether or not he’d like additional servings of sugar or milk or cremated people. No coffee à la ashes.
I take his money and prepare his drink, glancing at the white china urn next to the coffee machine. Grandma’s death was difficult enough, why did she have to make it even more so?

---

With a final exhalation, my grandmother slipped away from this mortal coil, leaving me with a corpse that yellowed over the next few hours and, unlike her living counterpart, provided me no comfort as I wept. The nurses had removed her spectacles and false dentures as she neared death; she looked like a foreigner who had clambered into my dying Grandma’s hospital bed and then rudely proceeded to die in her place.

Of course this wasn’t the case. This truly was my Grandma. This was indeed the same woman who had looked after me all my life ever since social services had snatched me away from my mum and dad and deposited me into her lap ordering her to heal the cigarette burns that peppered my arms and to feed me and to clothe me and to get me out of that two week old nappy that adorned my shit-covered arse and to provide me with a respectable education and to teach me how to be a functional member of society and to do all of the things that my parents should have – would have – done if they were proper, conventional and morally clean people but of course they weren’t, instead they were despicable, disgraceful drug addicts that didn’t care about their own lives, let alone the life of the son they had accidentally conceived during a night of impassionate love-making when they were too stoned to even understand the words ‘mother’ or ‘father’, let alone understand the responsibilities and commitment that came with those words.

As it was I owed a lot to her.
Or rather, I owed a lot to her memory, as she had now left me alone in the freezing palliative care room that I could barely afford.

---

F-U-C-K.
That’s how grandma taught me to swear. She didn’t mind the occasional ‘shit’ or ‘bloody’ or even if I took the Lord’s name in vain but if I ever said F-U-C-K in full I got a clip around the ear, yessir, and gee would it sting.
F-U-C-K-ing F-U-C-K-ing F-U-C-K F-U-C-K.
Why did she have to ruin it? I loved her, I still do love her, or at least my memories of her. Her death should have been a melancholic experience to cap off a wonderful lifetime and she instead decided to F-U-C-K it all up.
“Leroy.”
“Yes grandma?”
“When I’m gone I want to be cremated.”
“Okay grandma.”
“Leroy?”
“Yes grandma?”
“I want you to take my ashes.”
“Okay grandma.”
“And I want you to go to that diner where you work and tip some of my ashes into different people’s drinks.”
“…”
“Leroy?”

I didn’t ask why. I thought I knew. My grandma was filled with so much love and warmth. She was relief. She was comfort. She was unadulterated happiness.
She was to me what a needle is to a heroin addict.
Much like a heroin addict, when she was taken from me I was lost.
Docile.
Scared.
An innocent little lamb in a world of wolves.
She wanted me to share her boundless tenderness to the world. This is something I have no fault with. In a world filled with bitterness, cynicism and selfishness we all need something to shine through the gloom and my grandma wanted to be that.
Her methods are not agreeable though.
My grandma was, of all things, a hunter. She had a fierce side to her that was seen only by the prey she had lined up in the sights of her rifle. It was because of this hobby that she developed a peculiar philosophy on life.
The Catholics believe in the afterlife.
The Buddhists believe in reincarnation.
My grandma believed in reality.
Your state of being defines you. If you are tired, you are tired. If you are hungry, you are hungry. If you are dead, well-
There is nothing.
Black.
Void.
Empty.
So why waste death? Why not make something good out of it?

---

The tarnished bell on the front door of the diner rings as a nuclear family make their way inside. They sit at one of the booths and browse through the menu. Families like this are a dime a dozen, an unchanging constant in the twisting dynamic of social ideals. Just by looking at them I can tell that the father will have the Big Breakfast, the mother will order something that’s ‘slimming’ by Jenny Craig’s standards and the two kids will have Belgian waffles or pancakes.
Hopefully one of them has a coffee.
Bitter.
Covers the taste of ashes.
F-U-C-K I don’t want to do this. It feels so wrong.
The father pulls himself up and strides over to the counter with a friendly smile.
“Morning, you still doing breakfast?”
No.
Please go away.
I’m mourning over here.
“Yessir, what would you like?”
True to form he asks for a Big Breakfast, an extra side of bacon, a salmon roll and two sets of waffles.
And a coffee.
A cappuccino to be precise.
The cook in the kitchen behind me sets to work preparing the assortment of meals and leaves it to me to make the coffee.
Putting the filter in the brewing basket feels like a condemnation.
I watch the brown mixture drip into the mug which is bleached white from repeated dishwashing, like bones. It’s the same colour as the urn underneath the countertop.
When I die I just want to be buried. None of this metaphorical, philosophical, artsy bullshit. I don’t care if my body will be picked clean by maggots. Hell, I won’t be able to care.
From behind here, at my submissive place behind the counter, I may as well be a funeral director. This is my grandmother’s masterpiece.
Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.
Every fibre of my being screams at me to stop.
One of the kids laughs with jubilation as I shake a pinch of my grandmother’s ashes into the coffee.
I forget to smile when I give the family their breakfast.
The father doesn’t drink his coffee right away, no, he eats the meal first, biding his time.
The suspense is killing me.
Realising that I’m staring creepily at the dining family, I force myself to look away and stare at my distorted reflection in the glass of the desserts cabinet.

---

I think I understand.
The whole devouring ashes thing.
It’s honouring her.
Not just that, it’s spreading her memories.
Her happiness.
Everything that made her great.
It’s totally F-U-C-Ked, sure, but I do see the concept behind it all.
Of course I do also see the idea behind Marxism, that doesn’t mean I particularly agree with it.
There was a poem that she had framed on her bedroom wall. More accurately, it was a poem on one of those disposable calendars where you rip off each day of the month and throw it in the bin, much like the way you toss away and discard each shitty day of your life. Except for some reason she kept the scrap of the 16th of July framed alongside her family pictures, right next to a photo of my mother from when she was once untainted by drugs. It read:

Filled with stardust, the universe is unquestionably beautiful.
We too are filled with stardust.
So why don’t we think we’re beautiful?

I always thought it was a terrible poem, like something written by a first year university student doing a creative writing degree.
But it meant something to her.
And, to be honest, looking at these ashes, they do sort of look like a heap of glistening stardust.

---

I can’t do this though.
I just can’t.
F-U-C-K.
The father has the mug raised to his lips.
I brusquely hop over the counter and take the cappuccino from his hands.
“I’m so sorry sir, I’ve just realised that I gave you a latte when you asked for a cappuccino.
I’ll make you your proper coffee right away.”
He frowns at first, but puts on a warm smile and nods.
“Rightio, thanks for that pal.”
I tip the coffee down the sink, ashes and all.
Stardust swirls in the drain and trickles down into the sewers.
What the hell I am supposed to do?
I make a second cappuccino, minus the dead people.
He thanks me for fixing his drink.
I thank him for forgiving me.
The mother thanks me for being so polite.
I thank her for her kind words.
None of us really mean it.
I shuffle back to my submissive place behind the counter.
The hours tick by.
People come and go.
My grandmother sits in her bone white urn.
I think I know what to do.

---

My shift ends around midday. I drive home with my grandmother sitting comfortably in the passenger seat as the city buzzes around us.
People stare as I walk up the stairs to my small apartment. I can feel their gaze even after I’ve closed the door and set the urn on my kitchen table. At least I don’t need to live in this cramped place for much longer. Thankfully she’d entrusted me with the house, as well as her dying wishes.
My liquor cabinet contains a single bottle of bourbon. That’s all I need. I pour the entire bottle into the urn. It fills to the brim, the ashes swirling around amongst the booze, like a deranged image of the stars within the cosmos.
It’s a tiny universe. One that smells like alcoholism.
Her portrait looks down on me from across the room, smiling with the type of unequalled radiance that you forget exists from time to time.
Sure, it’s not exactly what she wanted. Sadly for her though, I don’t care. I just can’t bring myself to contaminate other people’s drinks with the dead’s ashes. I think that’s reasonable. But if she really wants someone to consume her entire existence, then what better person than me?