Mourning Shamefully

Do you know what is difficult to do?  Mourn shamefully.  I've been trying this entire week to figure out a way to mourn the loss of my father that would allow me to move on - because the last thing I want is to spend anymore time crying over this man.  Imagine you are the child of someone like Gary Ridgeway or Charles Manson, and your father, afore mentioned bad guy, was actually pretty great as far as the parenting thing went, but also had this ugly side.  How do you mourn that?  People around you are thinking, "Yes! The human race just improved with that death!" and you agree with them, but are so, so sad on the inside.  What do you do with that?  Mourn the father, hate the man?  Not so easy to pull them apart.

My brother was saddled with the late life and after life care of my father.  He flew into Seattle to handle all the death related business.  Unfortunately, my father's ashes were not done in time for my brother to pick them up and spread them.  This task was left to me, for which my brother apologized.  Today I went and picked up the ashes of both my grandmother and my father and spread them into a river that will carry them to the ocean.  It was his wish to be put into the water with his mother who had died 12 years ago.  He'd been saving her ashes since.  

I wasn't at all prepared to carry a box of ashes that used to be my father on my lap as we drove through town.  I'd seen all this before when Jason's father passed four years ago but today it was somehow different.  For me to be the one that spread, dumped, disposed of him was a little strange too.  Mostly, it was sad.  It was sad to me that any man or woman that spends 70 years on this earth has no one but a few angry children left behind to send them off.  In all his time here, all the chances he had to do right, he was really just alone.  Now, I know why he was alone, but that doesn't make it any less sad to me.  Also, how awful for him that I was the one, the only one, there to send him off.  Me, whom he could not bring himself to do right by.  Me, angry and sad, I poured his remains in the river.  There was no fanfare, no words spoken or memories shared.  No flowers tossed in the water.  Nothing.  So depressing.  When a mother holds her son and looks into his face, wishing for a wonderful life for him, she never envisions this.  

So, today was really hard.  Tonight is really hard.  I am upset, and then I get angry that I am upset.  I wonder if losing a man like this is easier than losing someone wonderful?  Because if it is, I can't imagine the loss of a truly loved one.  I will work through this, as we all do.  The truth is, I just want to be done with it.  I just want to press a button or swallow a pill and be done. Mourning is hard enough, but feeling shame for doing it makes it even harder.  Bless everyone that has done this before me and everyone that will follow.  It is easy feat.