A friend, today, picked up her grandmother's remains; she had been
cremated and sealed in a grey metal box. There is one thing about this
activity that most people do not realise, and that is the weight. Though
they be ashes, and we think of ashes as light, airy, the human body weighs
quite a bit more than we think it does. It is a strange weight, a strange
feeling, to know that in so small a space as something no larger than a
shoebox, a human body resides. It is a weight I understand. I have carried
it too.