Dear Richard
A while ago you advised a family with divergent views about what to do with a loved one’s ashes. My problem is different. My husband’s mother died during the pandemic, and her ashes have been sitting on a chest of drawers in the spare room ever since she was cremated. The plan was that they be interred alongside her husband’s, in a pretty churchyard in Norfolk, where they lived in retirement. All fair enough.
The trouble is my husband’s done nothing about it. The estate was a little complicated but it was all sorted out two years ago; there’s money in the pot for getting the stone done; we could stay with his sister, who lives not far away. I’ve brightly suggested it as a sort of mini-break and he said he liked the idea – but then nothing.
I don’t want to nag – I suspect that if he’s dragging his feet (which he doesn’t do on other tasks that need doing), it’s because he was very close to his mother and quite likes having her, or something of her, around. Whereas I find it untidy and, if I’m honest, a bit morbid – though I may feel that way because my relationship with my mother-in-law was on the cool side.
What’s a diplomatic way of resolving this? I slightly feel as if there are three of us in this marriage at the moment!
— Ros, via email
Dear Ros
Well, there aren’t. Three of you in your marriage, that is. I realise you’re half-joking when you say that, but to me it’s indicative of the slightly obsessive frame of mind you may be drifting into.
Look, Ros. Keeping a loved one’s ashes at home – often in a much more prominent place than a spare room (the living room mantelpiece, for example) – is not uncommon. It’s not odd or obsessive, and I wouldn’t describe it as morbid. True, it isn’t for everyone (I wouldn’t care for it), but I think you need to cut your husband more slack on this.
Because he does accept that his mother’s ashes are destined for that Norfolk churchyard, doesn’t he? He’s not arguing against it. He’s just finding it emotionally difficult to enact the decision. And meanwhile, as I say, the ashes are tucked away in a room that no one has any particular reason to enter.
You ask for a way of resolving this, so here’s my advice. Give him time. I’m certain that when he’s ready, he’ll lay his mother’s remains to rest alongside her husband’s. So let the old lady lie in peace in the spare room for a while longer.
Honestly, Ros, where’s the harm?
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