Things I've Lost

I seem to have a lot of new subscribers, so welcome and thank you to all of you! I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’m working on some pieces now. In the meantime, here is something I wrote in October 2025.

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Things I have lost in the last year and two days: my driver’s license, just before leaving on our 12-day cross country road trip as the only driver; one of my favorites sweaters, a cozy black pullover hoodie, unless somehow it is buried in one of the boxes we haven’t unpacked yet; my patience (but doesn’t everyone? And I am still more patient than most); my interest in reading fiction; my debit card, though it’s probably somewhere in one of the boys’ rooms; and my husband, Andy.

That’s what I usually tell people when the subject comes up: “I lost my husband.”

It sounds careless, but “my husband is dead” sounds crass; “my husband died” too blunt, both bringing a hiccup to a conversation. “I lost my husband” keeps it light, as much as losing a spouse can be, and minimizes conversational detours.

But every time I say it, I know it’s not true. He’s not lost.

He’s dead.

He is sitting on the kitchen counter in an urn we bought on Amazon.

If you haven’t shopped online for urns before, I recommend you try it. Any hobby or interest you can imagine (guns, Jesus, RVs, kittens, Disney characters) can be represented with an urn.

The urns come in all sizes too: some are thimble-size, made for a smidgen of ashes, or the remains of small pets. Some are enormous to house plus-size human ashes.

They can be tacky or refined, though – and I didn’t know I was an urn snob until I had need for one – most are tacky and would not be out of place in one of those tourist stores in Times Square, with the bright fluorescent lights and mirrored walls to make the space look bigger, and bright marigold toy taxi cabs and Statue of Liberty hats and banks and dolls, and “I (heart) NY” t-shirt and magnets and tote bags.

I imagine a glossy white plastic box with “I (heart) Andy” in large print across the front, and matching key chains with heart-shaped containers to carry some ashes on everyday errands; or a giant Elvis figurine that holds the ashes and has a music box that plays an Elvis song of your choice. I would choose “Heartbreak Hotel.”

“Well, since my baby left me

I found a new place to dwell

Down at the end of Lonely Street

At Heartbreak Hotel”

Truthfully I left him several months before he died, but I was with him again at the end, and I do miss him. And he deserved more than a hideous urn on Amazon.

I eventually stumbled on an understated urn made by a guy in the former Soviet bloc who makes sleek square wooden urns at a reasonable price, and will carve a name and other information onto the urn (max of three lines in a small selection of fonts, including a cursive font that gives off comics sans vibes but is the most somber font available). The box is plain and sturdy and requires a Phillips screwdriver to remove the cover on the bottom of the box, drop the ashes in (preferably already housed in a thick plastic bag), and reattach the cover.

I tried not to look at the opaque bag of ashes when I transferred it from the cardboard box the crematorium handed me to the urn. I heard there would be bone fragments so I handled them quickly and didn’t look closely to avoid the more tangible reminders that this used to be a body, or a person, or Andy.

Andy wanted his ashes to be scattered into the Mohawk River near Crescent, New York, where he spent his childhood. Jackson and Charlie and I had every intention of doing so during our cross-country move.

But as we drove, we talked about keeping some of the ashes, but we weren’t sure how many to keep and where to keep them, and whether it was okay to separate them, and if we would be able to toss the ashes without them blowing back on us, and eventually we agreed that while he had asked to put his ashes in the Mohawk, he did not specify WHEN we had to do so, and therefore we would take him on the road trip with us and figure out the ash-spreading details later.

Now his urn is a daily reminder - not that we need one - sitting next to a photo of him and Brian Wilson, a candle from Carl Wilson’s funeral, a little jar of sand with a picture (not a photo) of Brian inside it, the two little stuffed animals he was clinching when he died – a unicorn, from a gift from our young friend Gala, and a black and brown puppy – and on top, one of my favorite family photos from the boys’ 7^th birthday party.

And just over a year later, the grief and anxiety and despair is worse than it was when he died, though thanks to meds and therapy, not as horrible as it was a month ago.