I’d never seen cremains before. I never even knew that human ashes are called ‘cremains’ until my wife pointed it out to me. It makes sense when you think about it, though.

My cousin Billy pulled the heavy, beautifully crafted wooden box from the trunk of his car, and I asked him to open it. ‘So, this is all that’s left of grandmother?’ I thought to myself.

Inside the box was a clear plastic bag filled with a fine, greyish, powdery substance. I was fascinated. An entire human being reduced to nothing but a bag of dust. That whole ‘ashes to ashes’ spiel took on a whole new meaning for me at that moment. The Neptune Society had done their part. Those cremation furnaces really get the job done!

I poked the bag with my finger. “Wow,” I muttered softly, and then Billy closed the lid. It wasn’t even noon yet and I was already sweating profusely from the stifling humidity. Indiana in early June can be pretty miserable. I was dying.

My family had gathered to celebrate grandmother’s life and disperse her ashes in Sugar Creek – an estuary of the mighty Wabash River – according to her wishes. For various reasons which I won’t go into now, the group did not include my two brothers, or my uncle Bill, her only son.

I hadn’t seen most of them since I was a little boy. We’ve never been a particularly tight-knit family, and I’ll admit I didn’t really care to reconnect with any of them once we’d completed our mission. Still, this was as close to a ‘family reunion’ as I was ever likely to get in my lifetime. I was grateful that so many of them showed up, at least. I don’t have a very large family; the total number amounted to less than twenty people.

Sugar Creek is situated in a lush, green, very rural corner of grandmother’s beloved home state of Indiana, near Turkey Run State Park. The area is also home to a large Amish population. We could see them in the distance, diligently plowing their fields as we drove through the countryside.

My cousin Lauri and her husband Dave had gone to the trouble of renting a huge guesthouse at a cozy little place called Hobson Farms for the people who mattered most in grandmother’s life: her and Dave, me and my wife Valerie; my mom, cousin Billy, and Lauri’s three beautiful daughters, Samantha, Robin, and Mollie. Everyone else either lived nearby or made other arrangements to be there.

After posing for far too many group photos, we all piled into our vehicles and drove a half mile or so down the road to the banks of Sugar Creek. Nobody was quite sure how we were going to complete our task, but luckily we found a canoe launching site that turned out to be the perfect location.

We said a few words on her behalf at the side of the creek, and then Billy and I climbed down the stairs as the rest of the entourage waited on the landing. I cradled grandmother’s box as if it were a newborn baby.

Bill did the honors. When the deed was done, we cried and hugged each other as we watched grandmother’s cremains float downstream toward one of the historic covered bridges the area is famous for. Someone tossed a bouquet of flowers into the water.

**

Her family called her ‘Lillian’ but her actual given name was Xylphia, of all things: a name I have not come across before or since. How or why she was bestowed with such a bizarre moniker has never been fully explained to me. In any case, I was only made aware of this fact a few years before she passed away when she showed us a copy of her tattered, ancient birth certificate.

I learned so much about my grandmother during the seven or eight years when Val and I visited her at home in Arlington Heights, Illinois, just northeast of Chicago, where she spent her final days thanks to the charity of cousin Lauri and Dave. They lived down the road and graciously paid all of her expenses.

As a child, I had always been terrified of grandmother’s stern, authoritarian façade. She was nothing like my mother. My mom was a typical, stay-at-home housewife. Lillian was an independent, assertive woman who lived life on her own terms. She didn’t take any shit from anyone, and she worked as hard as any man; probably harder. She wasn’t particularly fond of unruly children, either. She would not tolerate being embarrassed in public. “Shape up or ship out!” she would warn us when we started acting up.

**

Lillian was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on May 18th, 1922, in the bedroom of a tiny house next to the B&O railroad tracks. Calvin Coolidge was president, World War I had been over for five years; the Russian Revolution was only four years old. “Yes We Have No Bananas” was the most popular song of the day.

Her mother, Violet Perry, my great-grandmother, was only 14 years old at the time. There was no indoor plumbing in those days, no electricity, no gas, no central heating; not even refrigeration to speak of.

The trains chugged back and forth, sending up clouds of gritty smoke which settled over the area in thick, acrid layers. The railroad eventually put up a crossing gate on the property, and when Lillian was a little girl she used to stand on the side of the lot with her brothers Butch and Bub, waving to the engineers as they zoomed by. Sparks flew and cinders scattered; the gust of wind nearly blew her off her feet. The passengers traveling cross country on the trains looked as remote as kings peering out from the windows. To Lillian, the sound of train whistles spoke of distant worlds where life was better, easier – and she wanted to go there.

Early death was commonplace in those days. Children died of scarlet fever, tuberculosis, “consumption” and measles. Antibiotics were still unknown. Disease was a part of everyday life. Polio was a constant concern, killing and crippling many of Lillian’s contemporaries, eventually striking down her little sister, Dorothy as well. Every neighborhood had a child with a twisted stick for a leg.

Lillian grew up to be a stunning, raven-haired beauty with piercing blue eyes. She held her pert nose high and had an ear to ear grin until she was old enough to understand her ultimate fate as a female in that environment; then her smile turned into a rosebud pout. Lillian was just starting to learn what an advantage it was to be pretty.

She secretly dreamed of owning a bathtub someday. She would sleep in it if necessary. Her family accused her of playing the duchess and giving herself “airs” because of her passion for cleanliness.

For young girls in Lillian’s economic class, going to college was a distant fantasy. She was expected to find work as soon as she was able to; but she wasn’t like the other girls. While the other daughters in the neighborhood were succeeding in home economics, sewing and child-rearing, she spent her time reading poetry, learning Latin syntax, day-dreaming and worrying about her looks. She wasn’t cut out for a life of domestic labor. Washing dishes, babysitting and knitting were distasteful acts for Lillian. She wanted to be a writer, or an actress in Hollywood.

Growing up during the depression made everyone a materialist, and everybody desperately wanted to be successful, but for Lillian, being on the wrong end of a diaper or a broom was not the ideal place to start down that path.

While most families struggled during those brutal times, she somehow always managed to eat well. Even on the worst days there was still a bowl of oatmeal, a bologna sandwich, chipped dried-beef gravy on bread and macaroni and cheese to be had.

The big meal of the week was on Sunday, when the family had fried chicken. The men and boys always sat down and ate first, while Lillian and her mother served them. This was a practice she secretly vowed to abolish as soon as she was in charge of anything.

Lillian read voraciously and carried volumes of books home from the library. Reading took her to far off places where even the trains couldn’t go. Her ‘fancy book learning’ was beyond the understanding or tolerance of the rest of the family – especially her mother. She felt like a swimmer in deep ocean waters pulling away from someone too weak to catch up.

While her intellectual pride increased, resentment grew between the two of them as Lillian left her mother further and further behind. She found there was neither time nor money to stimulate a cultivated worldview. She had yet to be exposed to art, had never attended a concert or heard a symphony; not even on records – but she knew these things existed from her books.

She was driven by ambition to succeed at something. She focused all of her energy on reading and being head of the class in school. Lillian’s home life was intellectually unsatisfying, but education was something she could discover for herself. She basked in the steady glow of straight A’s and gold stars. She promised herself someday that she would become living proof that young women could succeed in the world through strength and grit, just like men.

Lillian went alone to music classes at an early age. She became a skilled pianist, but for some reason she never pursued that as a career. Her talent at the keyboard was a secret she kept deep inside her all of her life. The only time I ever saw my grandmother cry was when I innocently mentioned a newspaper clipping I’d come across many years later about her winning some kind of musical competition. Until the day she died, she never explained what became of that dream, and I never brought it up again.