Lois

It’s probably quite wrong to keep your father in a box, in your shed. But that’s what I do because “The Shed” is my workshop so I like to talk to him.

The box is small and brown and contains his ashes. There might only be his cremated ears and cremated left leg in there or his elbows and knees.

In fact how does any of us know it’s really our loved one? It might be the ashes from the morticians heavy smoking session for all we know!

Made of polished wood, it’s very heavy and sits like a dignified object of antiquity, next to which I keep his favourite gold cufflinks and the last card he wrote me a year before he flew up into the clouds. Psychologically they all reek of cigarettes and he’s probably lighting up in there, watching me renovating furniture and laughing at my handiwork!

At one time, I kept him in my office which was also the guest room so I could talk to him while at my desk. The ashes sit on a shelf opposite the bed. Ironically, my mother had to sleep in the guest room when she came to visit and my parents loathed each other. I just forgot to point it out and my mother never mentioned that having her dead ex husband watching her snore like an incinerator might be remotely uncomfortable.

Anyway, here’s to you Pops!