Disposal

here and there
by victoria slind-flor, California USA
journalist, Aged 59

Before my husband died of AIDS in 1997, he gave me specific instructions about disposal of his ashes: some were to go on a family plot in the pioneer coal-miners' cemetery in Washington State, some to a meadow in Berkeley, California's Tilden Park, some to the Pacific Ocean, and some to be placed on the grave of Robert Kennedy at the Arlington National Cemetery. My husband had worked on Kennedy's 1968 campaign for the US presidency and deeply shared this Kennedy's commitment to social justice.

I put some of my husband's ashes into an Altoids tin and carried them to Washington D.C. There I poured them into a cellophane cone of flowers I brought to lay on Bobby Kennedy's grave. At the gravesite, as though overcome with emotion, I let the bouquet fall foward out of my hand and land up-side down on the grave. I gave it a good shake before I picked it up again, thus depositing my husband's remains with those of a political figure whose values he had long admired.

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