Where would you like to end up?

Had a lovely family lunch today at the Toby Carvery in Ewell. I hadn't been to a Toby in years; I'd forgotten how nice the food is, and how dirt cheap! A massive roast lunch (not really my choice just after an excess of roast dinners over the past few days, but the mother in law likes it and it was a day for her) for £5.95. Including drinks, puddings and coffee, it came to less than a tenner a head. I don't think you could make a big family roast for much less, the price of meat these days, and we didn't have to do the washing up.

We went because it would have been my late father in law's birthday, and this is the first year she has been without him. Originally, the idea had been to have lunch and then do something with the ashes, which are at present sitting in a rather unglamourous plastic pot in the cupboard under her stairs. But in the end she couldn't make up her mind what to do with the ashes, so we just went out and had lunch.

The trouble is that my mother in law doesn't like making decisions, particularly if they are about something difficult or unpalatable, and this was both. I can see those ashes sitting there for years to come because she can't make up her mind what to do with them, as a somewhat grisly reminder of my father in law who was a very sweet man and certainly wouldn't have wanted that to happen. I bet next Christmas I'll be rummaging under the stairs for the bottle of port and trip over the bloody plastic pot, scattering him all over the carpet to be mixed in with the Shake'n'vac.

It does seem very odd, the thing about the ashes and what to do with them. Surely it would be better for the crematorium to charge an extra £500 (which sounds a lot, but the cost of funerals like everything else is astronomic so it won't make much difference) and automatically put a plaque up, or send them up in a firework, or whatever. But in essence to give you some definite choices, rather than just getting you to take them home to get them out of their way. In any case, they could just be any old ashes; I mean how do you know that what you've got is your loved one? The speed with which they process funerals through the chapels means that you could be getting anyone scraped out of the oven, surely?

Anyway, she's got them. And she can't decide what to do with them. But it's not healthy in so many ways (I don't mean they're infectious or unclean or anything, by the way) just to have them hanging about. There's something rather Victorian and gloomy about it, and no closure. I had the idea that they should be buried under a nice shrub in the garden; she likes gardening, they would produce a beautiful plant and still be close to her. But that was rejected. So back to racking the brains about it.

Personally, I think I'd like to be fired into the heavens in a firework. I've always liked flying, and there's something very attractive in the idea of being up there amongst the stars. Better write it into the will, so I don't end up in an undistinguished plastic pot in the under stairs cupboard too!