Carol Gano- Ashes

Right. I’m warning you in advance. This is not a happy topic.

My mum is dead. When she died my daughter was visiting from Australia for Xmas and Elle (my kid) and I had gone to the UK and were staying at my friend’s apartment for free.

Worst snow storms that year. It was unclear if we’d get to fly out, but even more critical, could her plane land in Portland? I went to the airport to pick her up. Planes were not landing. There wasn’t a stockpile of de-icer in flights from Australia. Portland usually had very limited snowfall. This was out-of-hand, full-on, the sky’s opening and discharging fluffy, non-compacting ‘don’t even try to walk through unless you brought your snow shoes’. Planes were backed up, delayed and sent south of Portland to land where it wasn’t snowing. She wasn’t going to arrive that day, so I took the public transport back home, packed my bags for Europe, as we were due to leave the next day regardless. Then catch the last rail before sundown back to the airport and beat the closing of the trains due to freezing tracks as the temps dropped further with the setting sun.

She was housed in a hotel room with another girl (SJ, I think). Me and a ridiculous number of other people were airport ‘stuck’. Luckily, the airport took pity and fed us all, packaged sandwiches and drinks that night. We were everywhere, all the chairs taken, all the walls were coated in people trying to sleep, make light of it, not worry about connecting flights, kids and loves ones. Yikes, it was crazy, but everyone seemed civil.

Next day, her plane was routed back to Portland and we caught out flight to Europe. My phone charge died. I spoke to my sister NOT my mother. Asked her to let mum know what was happening.

Europe was also over snow, we were freezing, so, we decided to go to Barcelona. That’s another story. Anyway.

The trip back was uneventful. Once home, I checked phone messages.

Only –

The first message was my dad.

He’d NEVER called me once, in his life. ‘Carol, how do you do CPR?’ dead phone. What?

Within the next hour, I learned mum had died. She had been cremated and she was ashes. That was my Christmas present. Only mum kept tabs on me and no one knew where I was. Ashes – mum’s ashes.