Thanksgiving...

Trevor and I are adding on to our house, which is significant if you consider how much I hate to commit to anything new. And about right if you consider that we are doing only half the project because I drug my feet for so long that everything suddenly cost twice what it did when we first started chatting with a designer and architect literal years ago.  

(Trevor loves to point out that if we had just run with the plans when we first had them drawn up, we’d be done with the whole project – as opposed to only halfway done with Phase 1. Thanks, Trev.)

The good news is that Trevor is getting his new kitchen, my aunt is getting a powder bath, and I won’t have to do laundry in the breakfast nook anymore. The bad news is that my kitchen is now in my dining room and I can’t park in my garage. But it is temporary. Plus, it has given us a very good reason to go through things and purge.

Which leads me to the point of this post.

Remember Gran? Trevor’s grandmother who passed away in August of 2011 when I was pregnant with Banner? Well, she donated her body to science and was gone for about two months before coming home in a USPS box (which I always thought was perfect somehow. She would have loved seeing how the postal system works from the perspective of a package, I’m just sure of it). I can’t remember when exactly, but we either scattered her ashes at Thanksgiving or Christmas of that year. I was uncomfortably pregnant at the time and my memory has never been what it was prior to March 2011. All I remember for sure is that Spence made a half joke about what would happen if Camilla’s garden statuary started moving DURING THE ACTUAL SCATTERING OF GRAN'S REMAINS in the ivy on the northern side of their backyard.

What I don’t remember is that we evidently didn’t scatter ALL of Gran that day.  Had you asked me at the beginning of November, I would have sworn we did.

Apparently, half of Gran’s ashes went home with Trevor’s uncle, Randy. He may/may not have scattered her at his house (no one knows for sure, but the presumption is that he most likely scattered some of her there).  When Randy passed in May of 2016, Camilla wondered what Randy had done with their mother's remaining ashes.  She sort of assumed she'd find the USPS box while cleaning out Randy's house last year.  When that didn't happen, she presumed he scattered the rest of her in his yard.  This stung a little when his house was sold and later demolished by a developer.  A McMansion is going up on Randy's old lot now, and Camilla had lamented earlier this fall about part of her mother being built on top of and surrounded by total strangers.

But, surprise!  Randy actually gave what remained of Gran to Trevor.

Trevor only has a vague memory of this transaction, which suggests that it occurred when Banner was brand, spanking new and we were in the throes of first time parenthood.  It is even possible that he didn't register what (or who!) was in the USPS box when Randy handed it to him.  The only thing we know for sure is that Trevor immediately forgot he was in possession of the box/his grandmother and left it/her in the garage where, six years later, he was very (VERY!) surprised by the contents of a seemingly ordinary USPS box that he unearthed from a particularly cluttered corner of our garage.

 (Oh, Tweb-bee...)

And, yes, admitting that my husband forgot his grandmother’s ashes were in our garage makes us terrible people.  Who does that?

(Answer:  Us.)

In my defense, I never knew that Gran’s ashes came back to our house. If I did, she would have at least been kept INSIDE the house. Heck, both Gypsy and Haskell’s ashes are in personalized cedar boxes under my side of the bed. That’s where they always hid when they got scared, and it seemed fitting (and a personal comfort to me as I adjust to life without them). That said, I think Trevor’s grandmother would have found the entire situation comical, and quite possibly orchestrated it from beyond on purpose (it certainly seems like something she would have done). If nothing else it probably explains a lot about various things that have happen over the course of the last six or so years (namely Schafer, who also happens to be Gran’s namesake).

Cut to Thanksgiving. My BFF, Jacq, had come into town to spend the holiday with us and we were about to leave for dinner at Camilla’s house when Trevor grabbed gift wrap out of the attic and covered a certain nondescript USPS box in brightly colored Happy Birthday paper. Then, once we arrived at his mother’s house, Trevor proudly presented the package to his brother as a 37th birthday gift.

That's right.  Not only are we the kind of people who forget about loved one's ashes in our garage, but - when we find/remember - we also gift wrap them and pass them along to unsuspecting family members.

Y’all. I’ve never consumed a glass of wine as fast as I did that night.

Spence started to open the “present” as Beverly reminded everyone that her birthday actually came a full two weeks before Spencer’s in mid December ("Where is my present, Trevor?"). The wrapping paper fell to the floor and Spence ripped open the top of the USPS box, and then blinked a lot as his brain registered its contents. Trevor started to giggle, I poured myself a second glass of wine, Camilla rolled her eyes, Spence slowly lifted the ziplock baggie of ashes out of the box with a look of confused horror on his face, Banner piped up to ask why daddy just gave Spencer dirt in a bag, and poor Jacq just looked around at us all like we were certifiably nuts.

The one thing everyone agrees on is that Gran would have loved the whole thing: “hiding” in our garage for years, being passed from one loved one to another, being a literal gift that keeps on giving – all that was/is right up her alley. As weird as the whole situation was/is, it also resurrected Gran in a way, and got us all talking and sharing memories about her again. In my mind I can imagine her in her bright pink boa, declaring herself to be the Best Present Ever, and thinking the entire situation was "absolutely wonderful" before chuckling to herself and taking one more long, deep sip of Jack and Coke. 

And, yes, there are also plans to spread the rest of her ashes in Camilla’s backyard at a future date when the whole family can be together again.  I'm looking forward to telling Banner and Schafer about their great grandma and remembering Gran some more.  That woman was fabulous and the closest anyone has ever come to being literally awesome.