My Mother's Ashes ... Cremation - House Fire ... Keeper of Ashes ...
written by Gloria Faye Brown Bates
Gloria Faye Brown Bates ... photo taken 2019
My mother, Daisy Earlene Strother, died September 09, 2001. On September 11, 2001 ... I was getting ready to go to funeral home to pick her ashes up when somehow ... through the shock of losing my mother ... I became aware of the awful thing happening in New York City ... Trade Centers.
I was standing in a daze my eyes really not seeing anything. I guess the journalist's excited voice must have penetrated the shock. I leaned in closer trying to understand what so bad was happening ... I could see an airplane heading toward the Trade Center through my eyes ... eyes that were foggy, cloudy from all my tears.
That's what immediately comes to my mind when I remember my mother's death. A couple more things come to mind, also. I won't write about them. Too painful ... and too many questions I know I will get answers to one day.
I kept my mother's ashes ... I gave my brothers the chance to keep them thinking that way they would know I wasn't trying to just take them over. I think maybe the fear of having them in the home ... prevented them from taking them. You know people are still afraid of 'dead people' ... and having their ashes.
I don't feel that way ... I have both my mother's ashes and one of my brother's ashes. I did have my cousin's ashes ... he asked me to keep them. I did let them travel through the mail to his sister in another state to be buried beneath her beautiful tree where her mother's (my mother's sister) ashes were buried. I don't think he would have minded at all.
On September 28, 2004 ... we lost all our belongings in a house fire due to faulty old wiring. It was another day ... I stood in pure shock at something 'bad' happening in my life ... watching the house burn down, firemen trying to save it.
Later ... when told specifically not to try to go up the stairs ... people who know me know I will do things hoping to rescue, save, get things if I feel ... I need to. It's in me to make my own decisions and I feel if I need to do something ... I will sometimes getting myself into trouble.
I did ... go up those fragile-looking stairs ... later when no one was there. I wouldn't have many of the photos I share with you or have ... if I hadn't made the decision to go up the steps. They were in a huge suitcase and later ... when I opened the suitcase ... it was full of water.
When you see damaged, torn, blurred photos ... they survived a huge house fire. I'm fortunate to have any ... and have lots of them. I'm so glad I had packed the huge suitcase full with my photos ... I think that's what helped me to have them today. The photos were pressed tightly together where I had stuffed them in for a later day to sort.
Tommy's wife sat, wiping each one dry for hours. I worked at trying to separate them ... they were stuck together. It took days, weeks to do that. I worked at them through time.
I kept coming back to look through the ashes, rubble hoping to find anything ... something to salvage of our life. I did find little things ... I did find the big, charred gray mass you see in the photo ... I picked it up thinking it seemed somehow familiar.
It dawned on me ... 'where' I picked the charred, gray mass up at was beneath the fireplace in the bedroom ... on the mantle. The fireplace, the mantle was burned up in the fire ... the ashes made it. How sad is that? My mother's ashes ... almost burning up.
I had found my mother's ashes! Grief ... pain overwhelmed me ... the house and all we owned was gone ... and my poor mother ... had been in a fire once again. Crazy thoughts I know ... but, true ones. The sadness ... the deep, deep pain.
Not only that ... I was shocked, upset that everyone and their daddy ... were coming to search through the debris to take things ... our things. Our neighbors watched people stop ... search, walk around hoping to find a treasure.
I never knew people would ... steal ... from the ashes of someone's life. We lived on a corner in town ... it was convenient for someone to park, get out and walk to all the rubble left from the fire.
Later in time ... we bought a pretty rose chest to put my mother's ashes in. She loved roses ... I painted her roses once not so long before she died. Photo below is rose chest my mother's ashes are in.
Several years later I was in my art room when Tommy and his family came to visit. I will never forget her remark that day ... when she asked about the chests. I told her I kept my mother's and brother's ashes in the chests.
She called me ... The Keeper of Ashes.
Photos/true story owned, written by Gloria Faye Brown Bates
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