Welp, just this minute I’m sitting here waiting for a couple of lawyers to show up.
To be more specific; the discussion will concern the mortuary in Sun City where my parents were laid to rest…without my advice, without my specific knowledge.
Not to sound altogether too goddamn embittered, I have to allow that my parents had made arrangements for themselves years before my mother died. And she died years before my father’s unhappy demise. But…
Yeah. But….
Backstory: My mother dies, having smoked herself into eternity. She and my father are living in Sun City by then, and had been there for some time. Among the many wise-old-age things they did while they were dwelling there: they arranged to be cremated and then stored in the local mortuary.
Except…. I don’t know that they both did so that at the time. My mother was stashed in the place. But then my father went off and married the Dragon Lady, about whom (I s’ppose) the less said the better.
When my father died, he was reduced to ashes, dumped into an urn, and set on a shelf next to my mother, as per his wishes. Presumably.
But then…

Oh, yes: but then…. when the Dragon Lady died, her relatives arranged to have her cremated and stashed in the same mortuary, on the same shelf with my father and my mother.
It would be hard to describe — certainly not in polite terms — how much I reviled the Dragon Lady. She surely ranked among the meanest human beings you could hope not to meet. She reveled in her cruelty.
My father, after she had thoroughly alienated me from him, came to detest her. He was afraid to divorce her, because — as he put it — “she’ll get all my money!”
This was the great terror of his life: someone getting all his money.
Understand, he worked like an animal all his life to accrue enough to retire on. Given that he didn’t even have a high-school diploma, this was quite a challenge and quite an accomplishment.
I wish I’d been savvy enough to have said to him, “Daddy! Your daughter is married to one of the most powerful lawyers in the Southwest. That woman is NOT gonna get all your money.”
But I didn’t have the intellectual wherewithal to do that. Plus interfering in his affairs was not my style. So…stupidly, I let this just float along, as it would.
The relatives had not bothered to tell me when dear Dragon Lady died, nor indeed did they condescend to tell me that they had arranged to have her interred next to him and my mother in the Sun City mausoleum. In fact, it was just recently that I found this out.
*****
Lawyers in, discussion had, lawyers out the door.
It’s going to cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to pull this off. My will is going to have to be rewritten. Extracting my parents “cremains” from their prison in Sun City will cost a bundle. And buying space in the church’s graveyard will cost even more.
Maybe it’s not worth the headaches and the dollars. I dunno.
I must say…this makes me mad.
I am angry about it. What excuse did those people have to sneak around and deposit the Dragon Lady next to my father: the Dragon lady who made my father’s last years even more miserable than they needed to be?
Today’s discussion with the lawyers (speaking of “get all my money!”) will set me back $400. They estimate the entire maneuver will run about $4,000.
****
And…the more I think about this, the more I think it’s probably not worth doing. Who cares where their remains are stashed? They’re not alive to know about it. All their other relatives are dead: I’m the only immediate relative who survives either one of them.
And why do I care where their ashes are tucked away? Dead is dead is dead. A few ounces of whatever remains of them won’t bring them back, won’t make them any less dead. They’re not here to appreciate (or not appreciate) taking up residence in the green and quiet church close.
Huh.
Maybe I should just save my money, donate it to the church when the time comes, and let them arrange to celebrate whatever has passed for my life.
To me $400 sounds cheap to talk to two lawyers about anything.
But I do think it was worth it to find out how much it might cost to do what you wanted.
I think it is a good plan to give the money to the church for whatever you want.
True that!
But…but…why should I have to talk to some lawyer because people who aren’t related to me by blood chose to dork around with my father’s burial arrangements….arrangements that had been made long before these clowns came on the scene?
Whenever I catch my breath, I’ll try to arrange to talk with someone at rhe church. They may know better than these craven money-seeking “lawyers”…we shall see.
I’m curious. Are you paying for your parents’ resting place on a monthly or annual basis? When the financial arrangements were made, did your parents pay upfront for a ‘lease’ for a spot in the memorial park? And, at the end of that lease, are the cremains removed from the resting place? Or do the cremains literally stay there undisturbed for all eternity? I’ve never had to make arrangements for burial for anyone here in the US and so I am ignorant of the customary practices. I’m just wondering if the final arrangements are costing you any money and if so, wouldn’t it be a good idea for you and your parents to be scattered somewhere meaningful? How did the Dragon Lady end up spending eternity with your parents? I understand that she was married to your father and that is how she ended up there, but was there a financial cost? Who paid it? How long can she remain there? Forgive the questions. I am genuinely curious. My own mother was cremated and placed into a leased burial spot in the local churchyard (different country than the US). The lease is good for 99 years so ……. at the end of the lease, her remains will literally be turfed out. I have been wondering about retrieving her remains and disposing of them the way she would’ve wanted had my father not wanted an attention seeking (for himself) funeral that my mother never wanted. I personally have embraced the idea of human composting. Please dump me in the forest when the composting process is complete!
Good questions!
I’m not paying for it at all. My parents arranged things while they were both still living. Nothing was ever said to me about long-term arrangements: I gathered that they had paid for a place to hold them until the end of time.
Well. Till the end of human time, anyway.
HOW did Dear Dragon Lady end up in the same eternal quarters as my parents? Yeah: there’s a question!
It appears that my step-“sister” — my father’s third wife’s daughter, who was not my sister by any means but who was affluent, smart and influential — decided on her own where and how to stash my father’s remains. This happened several years ago. I was never asked to pay for his accommodations. I assumed he and my mother had made those arrangements years ago, while she was still living.
And…yeah…no one ever said to me that the place where the parents were stashed might be leased (there‘s an idea!!)…but now that you mention it, there’s something else I’d better ask about.
Garrrrrr!!!!! I’m going to have to find a person to talk to out there, drive 45 minutes (each way!) to lovely Sun City, and ask them these questions. And more. This is shaping up to be a long, headache-inducing nightmare.
Composting: good.
My (ex)mother-in-law arranged to have her body cremated, and then to have her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren carry her ashes to the edge of the Grand Canyon and cast them off into the gorge.
Legal? I do not know. But as ideas go: I love it.