So, the aged parent has been here since Wednesday, and left early this afternoon. We only arranged this a few days ago, though he said about two weeks back that he wanted to come. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder articulately, explicitly, what the reason for this visit might be. Not that he has to have a reason, you understand, but he doesn’t come often, and, to be honest, ever since the time when he demanded, with pretty much no warning and even less justification, that we repay a loan he’d told us he considered ‘gone’ only two weeks previously, my am-I-about-to-get-buggered-about-in-some-way radar has been at an all-time high, and I seem to be eternally on standby where he is concerned, poised to leap into a defensive pose of some sort.

It transpires that I was not entirely wrong to feel the vague sense of unease about this trip, though, fortunately for us both, that sense of peace that I reached a while back about my relationship with him seems to be persisting, ultimately. Despite a few prods to the contrary…

He has been lovely to the witchling, and took time to make her feel comfortable with him, hiding small somethings in his fists and letting her pry his fingers open to discover which side hid the present. He bought us a truly sumptuous Indian take-away last night, after a day spent rendering the house in hot sticky sunshine unlikely in late September. He produced a wad of cash towards the cost of yet another ton of sand needed to finish the sodding rendering (and yes, we hope that day may yet dawn). He took me to a local NCT sale and paid for a wodge of infant clothing which should keep the tiny daughter warm as the weather continues to cool.

And then…

He said he wants my mother’s ashes back. Largely because he feels that it’s time we addressed, finally, what is going to happen to them. I’ve had her ashes here, in Devon, for some time, and when he delivered them to me, I was under the impression that it was a permanent decision, at least from his point of view, and that, as I wanted them, it was sort of up to me from that point.

Now, if he ever finds this blog, I’m in real parental shit. Before I moved to this address, he found and read my thoughts on what to do with my mother’s ashes, as longer-term readers may recall; the fall-out was swift and extreme in nature, and after ranting at me over the phone, calling me inconsiderate and thoughtless, he didn’t speak to me for over a week. Well, I didn’t exactly seek him out during that time, as you may imagine, but whatever – it took a long time to move past that one. (Because a clarification is called for here – we don’t ever really resolve things, he and I; we simply move the carpet an inch or two higher to the ceiling as we diligently shove whatever the latest issue is into the darkest recess of the cobwebs.)

My first reaction was a mixture of anger and sadness. I felt that he’d only come because he wanted something, and that he’d either purposely misled me when he gave me her ashes initially, or had simply rewritten history to fit his view of it. Either way, not ideal. I said very little, knowing that if I got into an argument I’d only find that I was the one who suffered; the aged is a very good arguer, and has a remarkable knack for not only deeply pissing me off, but also managing to make me feel guilty about it at the same time. So, I succeeded in saying virtually nothing, and we moved on as Quercus, with rather handy – albeit inadvertent – timing, arrived home with a few tons of sand which needed shovelling off the back of the trailer.

And then I quietly fermented on it. Revolved it around in my mind, and thought about why I was cross, and why I was sad, and what to do, and what not to do.

And what it comes down to is this.

I learned when my mother was dying that there is virtually nothing truly worth falling out about, in terms of cataclysmic never-darken-my-door-again arguing. That things once said cannot be unsaid, no matter how much you may later wish they could be, and that you only really get one shot at this life, and the people you meet, and your relationships with them, might just be the most important part of life – more important than money, and things, and places – and that it’s all very well pushing the sense that you’re in the wrong, or behaving badly, or hurting someone, to the back of your mind, but that that doesn’t stop the sense being there; it merely puts ear-defenders on your conscience and passes it a very complicated crossword puzzle to keep it occupied while you continue to do whatever it is that you know you’ll later wish you hadn’t.

I am lucky in that my mum and I were very close, and there were no unspoken problems between us, and very few words I wish I hadn’t said; this has been a very genuine comfort to me in the years since she has been gone, and I imagine it will go on being. My relationship with the aged parent, however is not that simple, and has been fraught with hurt and guilt and resentment and defensiveness over the years, despite a shared sense of humour and a well-developed stiff-upper-lip attitude that I realise can be most unhelpful in terms of really KNOWING someone. However, whatever we may have fallen out about in the past, I don’t want to fall out with him now. Not over this. Not in a way which, because of its hyper-sensitive prompt, would surely be decisive, final, and, ultimately, futile.

So, despite my reservations, I think I am going to go along with his desire to have my mother’s ashes buried. Apart from any more emotional considerations, I look at the tiny daughter, and find myself wondering what on earth she would do with this dubious inheritance should I not do anything myself. I mean, one can hardly just leave one’s daughter with a box of human ashes, really, can one, perhaps supplementing it with some further relatives as the occasion warrants? Particularly as the tiny daughter never even met my mother? It seems cruel to leave the decision in her – still so tiny – hands, albeit deferred – one hopes – until she is a grown woman.* One of the very few negative things I learned from my mother is that it doesn’t help to be unclear about death, and what you want to happen after it happens to you. (Not that I hold her responsible for this, you understand; it’s more that I now see what I would prefer to do myself, in order to avoid this happening to the tiny daughter whenever I depart this mortal coil.)

She has been dead for nearly nine years; December 14 2000, just as the evening star became visible above a Christmas tree lit with stars for those who had already followed that inevitable path. Part of me finds this ludicrous – how can it be that long since I saw her last? Every moment of those months seems so clear – while another part sees the time when she was alive as almost another life, another me, another universe. I remember thinking, as she was dying, what an awfully long time would elapse, assuming I lived longer than she, before I would see her again, if we do exist in some form after we die; the years stretched before me like an unknown and unknowable journey, one for which a ticket had been forced upon me.**

I know that for many people, the fact that we have buried her ashes long since is a little odd, to put it mildly. I suppose it started with the fact that, while she was very clear about her funeral (down to choosing music and which version of various hymns she wanted), she said nothing about what should happen after that, perhaps understandably, and the jokes that she’d made, long before cancer became a blot on our particular family horizon,  about her ashes sitting in a ginger jar on the mantelpiece, with lid-rattling a means of communicating approval or approbation, only served to strengthen my feeling that a churchyard, no matter how nice, was not what she would have wanted. Mum was not avowedly religious, despite choosing a church funeral; I think she was hedging her bets, to put it bluntly, and felt the comfort of a church as something familiar from her early life. She wanted to believe in it all, I think, but wanting is a very different thing from actually doing.

The aged parent has suggested the churchyard closest to the house in which I grew up; it’s a very nice churchyard, as they go, which backs on to a beautiful vineyard, and houses a quietly beautiful example of Saxon architecture, something which would appeal to her, I think. I have asked him to find out if the convent school at which she taught would be willing to have her ashes buried in the churchyard there, as an alternative; she was, I think, happiest while teaching there, and, for probably the first time in her adult life, felt in control, confident and, though not in the way she’d expected, in love. (That is a Whole Nother Story, into which I might go another time, but while my brain throws these things up every time I think of her, it’s not really relevant to this already-behemoth-like post.) So, we’ll see; as Mum wasn’t even Roman Catholic, I suspect the answer will probably be no, but I felt I ought to at least ask.

I hate the idea of going back to Sussex. If I’m honest, the last time I was there, I felt I’d stayed too long in a place which no longer held a space for me; going back yet again is, I think, pretty sure to be a fairly bloody experience, and one which I’d prefer to avoid if possible. But of course, not going is simply not an option, and I am still trying to work out how I feel about the notion of Mum having a grave which I do not visit, realistically; I live more than a five-hour drive from the place, and have felt for years as if I was going back into my own past every time I get east of Chichester (still a good eighty miles west of my part of Sussex). The aged parent moved to Derbyshire nearly a year ago, shortly after he remarried, and he too has little reason to go back to Sussex, with the exception of the odd visit to my brother, who still lives there. So, neither of us will see her grave often. The only one who might is my brother, who saw her rarely when she was alive, despite a deep-seated affection for her. It’s ironic, really.

How to spell a long-drawn-out sigh, I wonder.

It’s a funny thing, this dying business, isn’t it?

* This, predictably, has made me think quite hard about what I would like to happen to my body after I die. So far, Quercus and I have agreed that we would like to be buried in the same place, and that, as he finds the idea of cremation abhorrent, it’s burial as in body, rather than ashes. We both quite like the idea of an ecologically sound approach; the Eco Pod is rather natty, frankly, so that’s quite high on the list, as is some sort of woodland burial. Clearly, all we need is to get our mits on so much money that we can buy a giant piece of land somewhere, and get ourselves safely stashed in the earth therein.

** I have often been tempted to try a séance, not least as my research area on the PhD front had a decidedly occult focus, and I read a lot about spiritualism and its origins while writing my thesis. But could one ever really believe it, I wonder? I’m not sure, and that’s probably why I’ve never actually done anything about it. You may say ‘but Earthenwitch, you a witch, woman! Surely that answer enough?’. Well, my answer to that is that the fact that witchcraft speaks to me on many levels (please forgive such a wanky phrase; it’s the only way I could think of putting it, really) doesn’t mean it answers every question I have, and nor does it prevent me thinking about alternatives as I find out about them. Bits and pieces of a lot of different spiritual outlooks make sense to me – I think I am a bit of a magpie in that respect – and it’s mainly the practical aspects of witchcraft which interest me the most, i.e. the seasonal transitions, the concept of things like cooking as a form of witchcraft, Knowing About ‘Erbs And All That, and so on.