Cass can't bring herself to watch her brother burn. All the websites say you should, and that you should also watch as they scrape the ash up and put it in the urn. That you should not take your eyes off your loved one at all.

She doesn't understand how anyone could follow that advice.

She stays in the waiting area, sitting in one of the hard plastic chairs. There is a bereavement room with a couch and a small table where people can sit and weep in something closer to comfort, but to Cass it feels too small and... full. Full of sadness and confusion and the ache of stale loneliness. Her grief needs more space. Her grief is bigger than a small room already crowded with painful echoes.

The little man in the dark suit brings her the urn. Mr. Merchant? No, that can't be right, and she can't quite remember. He stands in front of her, his face a mask of smooth, professional sympathy.

"Thank you," she says as she takes Warwick's ashes. It is far too light. All that is left of a life.

She is dry-eyed. She thinks she may finally be cried out, at least in public. Tonight will be different, though, when the house is quiet and the memories creep from the shadows.

Warwick, her big brother, combing her hair before school, his lower lip caught between his teeth in concentration.

Her brother, rolling his eyes as she sings the Barbie and the Rockers theme song and tries to get him to dance.

Her brother, lugging half broken furniture into their first shared apartment, grunting and grinning at the same time.

Her brother. Gone.

Mr. Maybe Merchant clears his throat. "Would you check, please? We pride ourselves on honesty, and your brother was very young. There should be a lot of possibility left."

Cass doesn't want to, but she can't bring herself to refuse. And part of her, a small squirming of curiosity down below all the blackness of her hurt, wants to know what it is like.

The lid is a screw-top, wider than her palm. It comes off easily enough.

She touches the tip of one finger to the ash. She does it quickly, as if shame is a slow thing that slinks in the corners of her mind and may not notice if she is fast enough.

She has never felt what is left of a life cut short before. The ash is fine and powdery, at least the top layer that she touches, but she barely registers that.

The ash swirls upwards as if in a tiny updraft, even though the air is still. The motes wrap her finger, and the grey flashes silver as it touches her skin. She feels love. Love for her and others in Warwick's life, love that is a deep well that has barely been tapped. There is even love, tinged with anger, for their mother. Cass marvels at that, even through the aching hollowness she feels.

And there is more in that touch of spent life. Growing from that love, that well of acceptance, weaving upwards like a plant from good root stock, is a solid chance for a good life. Not world-shaking, not the makings of a person for the ages, but something tinged with contentment and faith in others.

And faith in her.

All of it thrums with the beat of a small, contained hope, and a steadiness in the face of hard times. What the ash holds is rich, and full, and wasted.

All of it for nothing, now — at least for Warwick. Yet, it is the sort of potential that could help people, if the ash is treated well and parcelled out carefully. If it is given to people who need a bit of hope. People who need a bit of faith to help them along. It could do good — if she can bring herself to part with what is left of her brother.

Cass rubs the ash between her thumb and forefinger and lets a whisper of her brother's steadiness in. It falls into the deep cracks of grief within her. It is Warwick, rolling her eyes at her, grinning at her, combing her hair and fussing with her school uniform. It helps.

A little.

#

Cass had started making Warwick's sandwich when she saw him across the street. She had been keeping an eye out, because she always kept an eye out, and it wasn't hard to do in the little cupboard of a kiosk she worked in. It was hard, though, to not be distracted by the bustle of people on the street. Hard to not watch them and wonder if their lives were deep or shallow, if their baggage was made of heavy burlap sacks of pain or perhaps was the finest and lightest of designer trauma. Hard not to wonder how she compared.

Warwick ran across to the kiosk most days on his lunchbreak, and always had the same gross thing — hot English mustard, raw onion slices and pastrami on slightly stale rye bread. Not fresh bread, not toasted. Not a roll. That was fine, except she couldn't sell such a monstrosity to someone else if he didn't come, and she wasn't going to eat it. So she only ever made it when she saw him coming.

She had been spreading the mustard when she heard the screech of tires and the thump.

God, that thump.

#

Cass holds the urn very carefully as she approaches the front door of the little apartment she shared with Warwick. She is not really surprised to see her mother waiting, leaning against the wall, her posture casual but her eyes sharp. Her hair is longer than it was, and there are a few grey roots showing. Her face is as angular and drawn as ever. She looks tired. She looks angry. She looks the same as ever, in the ways that matter.

"Is that him?" her mother asks.

"Who else would it be?" Cass asks.

Her mother's mouth tightens into that familiar line, and her finger flicks at her half-burnt cigarette — tick, tick. It is as much a sound of her childhood as the Barbie cartoon theme song. Even though the urn is too light to hold a whole life, Cass's arms are aching and she longs to put it down.

"Come in," Cass says as she juggles the urn and opens the door. Her mother goes as still as a spooked animal for a moment, and then follows her daughter inside.

Cass cleans when she is bored, or upset, or stressed. A habit developed from necessity when younger, perhaps. Now, often less than useful. The apartment has been spotless for the last few days, the cracked linoleum of the kitchen floor gleaming, the bench scrubbed and smelling of lemon. Her mother looks around with as little interest as ever in such domesticity. In her daughter's life.

Cass puts the urn down on the wobbly kitchen table where Warwick had eaten cold toast a few days ago. Her mother glances at the remains of her only son and then ashes her cigarette in the kitchen sink.

Tick, tick.

"I want half," her mother says, and then takes a long draw of her cigarette. Cass watches the tip glow red and a thin line of smoke trail upward. The place is going to reek. Of smoke. Of the visit.

It is about what Cass expected but she still has to take a beat. This woman, her mother, who wants half of her brother when she gave so little of herself for so many years. Whose glazed eyes would sweep over them on the rare days she was up and about before they had left for school. Her mother, who wrapped herself in the smell of smoke and wine sweat as armour against the world, who had always so despised her children, those two totems of her tar-pit life.

But Cass knew that Warwick would not want them to fight. No, that is not quite right. Warwick would not want Cass to get caught up once again.

"We have each other," he would say sometimes, eating his stupid cold toast, or putting his feet up on the scratched coffee table. "I know you can't forgive her. But in a way, she gave us that."

So steady and sure. So measured. He always found a way forward, a way to be. She had always so wanted to be like him. That is what she thought, anyway. But here, in the kitchen, Cass is not sure what she wants to be.

"I'm sorry you couldn't make the funeral," she says.

Her mother blinks. Then she sticks out her jaw in that way that is so familiar even after so long. So sharp, so cutting.

"I've been busy. I've got a life you know." Her gaze flickers a little. Maybe there is a softening, maybe not. "Work, and stuff."

Cass tries to think the best. It is what Warwick would suggest. Perhaps part of her mother couldn't sit through the funeral of her dead son. Perhaps part of her couldn't stand seeing him burn. The loss of an anchor, real or perceived, is a frightening thing.

"I'm glad things are okay, Mum," Cass says. She doesn't know if she means it.

Her mother breathes out smoke. It rises between them like a wall.

"Half," she says again, and then taps her mostly done cigarette on the top of the urn. "He went young. That ash is worth a lot. I've been checking."

"Okay," Cass says as she wipes the cigarette mark from the lid of the urn. "But I'm not sure what to do. I have to think."

"Oh, you need to think!" her mother snaps. Her eyes are suddenly dark with anger, but her voice is sharp with broken shards of satisfaction. And pain. Always with the pain. Cass and Warwick, hurting their mother by being. Cass does not understand the love for her mother she felt in Warwick's ashes. The woman who gave nothing for so long, here to take yet again.

"You need to do what's right, girl. I'm your mother. I deserve half, at least. I could use the money." She looks around. "You could too."

Cass tries to push her anger away. She is close to falling into the old spiral — the one that pulls them both down as they hold on to each other, as they tear at each other. Warwick would have told her to ease back. That now they were out, living their lives, and they needed to let their mother be herself.

As if she could be anything else.

Cass closes her eyes and puts one hand on the urn. It is full of love, and hope, and all the good that Warwick may have done if he had lived. She has no idea how he held on to all of that. How he built himself from such things, when they had grown from the same spoilt ground.

There is so much that is good there, the remnants of him that he has left behind. A promise of a future that will never be.

"I need to think," she says again. And it is true, even though she does not want it to be.

#

She had thought the night would bring tears and the ache of old memories. She had been sure the early hours would have seeped into and through her, leaving her with exhaustion and the acrid taste of her mother's visit in the back of her throat.

But no. Just that sound, that hollow thump, and the feel of mustard scraping against dry bread. Both of those things, over and over, filling up the darkness of her room until she had come to the kitchen and sat at the wobbly table and stared at Warwick's ashes.

The scrape of mustard.

The screech of brakes.

The thump.

She does not think of the bright street and line of traffic as she runs screaming, the mustardy knife still gripped in her fist.

She does not think of Warwick, smiling at her eight-year-old self as she sings the Barbie song and dances.

She does not think of her mother, mouth tight, smoke curling up between them in the lemony kitchen.

Cass spins the lid off the urn and plunges her hand in. She needs to feel it. The ash twists up around her wrist, silvering as it moves and touches and shows her.

The hope that things will get better. The love that was, that could have gone on. The faith he had in her. The belief.

We have each other, Warwick almost whispers. She gave us that, at least.

And Cass cries again, because she can feel it, feel it all. It is a lot, and it is not enough, and it is all there is left.

And it has given her all the help that it can.

#

Her mother scoffs when Cass meets her at the door.

"Won't let me in?" she asks, but it is not really asking. She is hungry to be kept out. To push, and be pushed back. You can be sure of your place in someone's world if you are always an obstacle.

"I don't like the cigarettes," Cass says. "But you can come in if you won't smoke."

Her mother eyes her for a moment and then takes a cigarette from her pack and lights it.

"Here is fine," she says, smoke spilling out of her mouth as she speaks.

Cass expected nothing else. She bends and retrieves the urn from the floor and holds it out.

"Take it," she says.

Her mother narrows her eyes. "What's the catch?"

Cass shakes her head. "No catch."

She can't control what her mother will do with it. She may just sell it. She probably will. But Cass thinks she may be curious. They are so very different, but Cass thinks her mother may think of Warwick, back in a quiet moment of wherever she is calling home. Maybe in the early hours, like her daughter did. If she does, she may seek more than her own faded memories. She may just wonder what the ash feels like. Cass can hope for these things. It is only a small hope, but it is there.

A whole life can be built on small hope.

"It's worth a lot," her mother says, still wary.

Warwick, combing her hair, concentrating so hard.

Warwick, laughing as Cass sings and dances.

Love for their mother. Faith in Cass. A chance for a different future.

"It is," Cass says, and smiles as she begins to cry. "Which is why I'd like you to have it."

© 2024 Matt Tighe