Bringing Home the Ashes

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"Goodbye, king of sorrow
The curse of a thousand years beneath the globe
Worn down and hardly breathing...

Bringing home the ashes
Is more than I can bear
When winter lightning flashes
You'll find me lonely there..."--The Wild Swans (1988, Bringing Home the Ashes)

Grandfather's ashes is finally with us. This afternoon, as soon as I got home from job hunting in downtown Winnipeg, I saw the urn. I spent several minutes just standing there, staring at it in seeming disbelief. It fascinates and perplexes me in an inexplicable way. Just a few weeks ago, Grandfather was alive in the hospital, body and all. Now, he's reduced into ashes contained in a golden urn. Whatever he had become of, Grandfather's memory will live in me till the rest of my life.