Grandma’s Ashes in the Park – The Weird Side of the Internet

Grandma’s Ashes in the Park – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

One of the most satisfying and rewarding things one can do is to turn some abandoned plot of land into something beautiful, like a garden or a park. In Cornwall, England, gardener Paul Caruana, along with a small cadre, a “green thumb brigade,” have taken an ignored and forlorn stretch of the River Truro, and made it into “Sunny Corner,” a little slice of heaven for all who visit.

But it isn’t actual heaven, and this distinction may be lost on a number of folks who have been emptying the urns of their loved ones onto Sunny Corner’s verdant fields.

Now I get it. If your loved one isn’t in a coffee can on the mantle (Hi, dad!) you will want to find a place for their earthly remains. A lot of people know where they want to go, and they put it in their wills. But the guardians of the garden a Sunny Corner are begging people not to. And they’re asking for a bizarre and very reasonable reason; when they’re cleaning the garden, occasionally the wind takes an unlucky turn, mixes it up with a rake, and Uncle Teddy’s ashes go into the gardener’s mouth.

That’s gross, right? If the gardener swallows, is that cannibalism? Ans as I just described it, it has probably happened more than once.

They’re not total spoil sports. You are allowed to bury ashes there if you go through them, but most people aren’t.

Oh, and as a side jet, I read, from a funeral director, that no matter how hard they try, the contents of the urn do not only contain your loved one. Close, but not 100%.

Might as well go for a second side jet for the sake of symmetry. You can call the National Park Service (in America) and get permission to lay ashes in “memorialization.”

More from Liam Sweeny…