It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand

by Megan Devine

“You would say—why do people need to keep ashes? Can’t they just let go? Yes. Yes, babe. Eventually, I will take those bones and those teeth and that body I love to the river and to the woods. I will release that vessel I’ve loved so much, in so many different ways. But right now, your remains remain—safely sealed in a plastic urn inside a plastic bag inside a cardboard box sealed with tape and a sticker bearing your name. To take them out is to see you, to see the body I have loved, reduced to a permanent state of ash. Right now, I can’t let go. I can’t let this in. I can’t accept this in any way. I cannot swallow this truth, that you are gone, that the life we planned is done. If I try to look directly at that fact (that I refuse to let be fact), I feel the explosion start inside of me, the world cracks and my lungs fill, and I cannot breathe. All I know is that I cannot do that. I cannot look directly at this. Everything inside me will explode, and I cannot bear the tearing. It’s too big. It’s too severe. I’m being beaten by all this—the packing and the moving, your truck in my driveway that will be sold in the next two days, the bed in pieces in my room, waiting to be rebuilt, your photos, your ashes, the people clamoring for pieces of you, all of our things piled in various rooms. You are gone, and I can’t know that now. That you were here, that moment, just a regular moment, and then you were gone.