After waiting a year, I finally spread Chris’s remains in front of our house on the anniversary of his death. It felt good to finally put him to rest.

A year ago, I did not want to spread his remains at our current home because I suspected we would not live there much longer. I was right. We moved into our new home the day after Christmas.

At the time, I thought since he never lived at our new home, it would be more appropriate to spread his ashes at our West Virginia home, where he loved hanging out on the catio. Unfortunately, we had problems from the moment we arrived there at the end of May. I soon felt that we would not own that house for very much longer. I didn’t know we would sell it three months later. I suspected we would put it up for sale at the end of our stay in October, or maybe at the end of our stay the following year. In any case, I decided to bring Chris home to Florida.

My wife came outside with me to take photos. I opened the container. A few ashes came out, then nothing.

I looked inside and saw everything had hardened into one clump.

It felt disrespectful but I tapped the container on the sidewalk several times and tried again. It worked.

It felt wrong to throw away the container, so I dug a hole and buried it in front of our catio.

We have a nice front yard. Our driveway is at the back of the house. The front faces an empty lot that is owned by the six homes in our little association. Our house is at the end, so we also have more room on one side of our house. The original plan when the homes were built in the sixties was to have ten homes surrounding a courtyard. There are several associations just like that down our street. For some unknown reason, four homes were never built, leaving us with a unique natural area in front of our house.

What do you think? Do you like the spot I chose for Chris?