Scattering Mom and Dad: A Family Story About Ashes
By Debbie L. Miller
“Oh my God, I’m inhaling my parents!” Rhonda, my oldest sister cries, as the wind blpws ashes in her face.
Rhona had opened the bag and reached in to fling some ashes, just as the wind kicked up and blew them back at her. “Pfft!” she said, as she winced and spit out the offending substance. Meanwhile, Cindy, my middle sister, mumbled a prayer she’d found when she Googled “DIY Ash Scatterings.”
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It was a bright, sunny day in October when my sisters and I rendezvous at the airport in Denver for a weekend in Colorado, to scatter the ashes of our recently deceased parents in Rocky Mountain National Park.
My sisters were afraid we’d get caught strewing human remains in a national park, so, instead of driving far into the park, up into the mountains my parents had loved, Rhonda and Cindy drove our rental car a few hundred feet into the park, and announced this was where we were going to “dump,” I mean, “disperse” our dear parents’ remains.
“But, Mom and Dad loved this park,” I protest. “We need to drive further until we find a suitable mountainside vista.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not doing that,” Rhonda says.
