Strange Things....

Today I am going to get rid of the strangest thing in my home.

A tin of dog ashes.  From a dog I did not own.

You may be wondering how I came to be the owner of this particular tin of dog ashes...so here's that story.





Last July, I watched a friend's son for the day so she could pack to move. He was about a year older than Levi, so I followed him around all day making note of what I needed to childproof.  He almost immediately made a beeline for the fireplace.

 See all the stuff in there?  It was all there when we moved in, all behind a screen that we had just removed.  Most of it made sense:  candles, firestarting pinecones, and a tin that I had originally assumed had matches or something in it.  So, for the 3 years we had lived in this house, I had never laid a hand on this particular item.  The fireplace wasn't working, so we never lit a fire.  The tin was in the corner, so when I lit the candles, I never needed to move it.

Then I pulled it out.  "Always Remembered" it said on the side.  Confused, I opened it up...

Who would keep a tin of...sawdust?  Fireplace ashes?  Wait, the fireplace doesn't work...
When it hit me that it was cremains (and I had not yet established that it was dog ashes), my stomach dropped.  I may have panicked a bit.  It was about an hour before i could go near the tin again to read the labels.

Thankfully, one of the labels had the name of a pet crematorium.  Abigail was the name of the dog.  The odd part was, she didn't belong to the person we bought the house from...it belonged to the person who owned the home before him.  So it had been at least six years and three owners since Abigail had frolicked through my yard, slept in front of my fireplace, or chased around my kitchen.

I tried so hard to get ahold of Abigail's owner.  She had moved across town, but kept in touch with many neighbors (who told me that Abigail was a Golden Retriever).  I looked up her (the owner, not Abigail) phone number and left the most awkward messages ever.

"Um, hi...my name is Mindy...I live in your old house, and I found something important...I think they are your dog's ashes..."

I talked to neighbors and asked them to mention the ashes when they spoke to her.  I found out where she worked, but thought a visit might be crossing the line into creepiness.  Abigail's owner never called me back.  I'll never know why her ashes were left behind.  Was it an oversight?  Was it because that was Abigail's home?

Regardless, I realized in the fall that Abigail's ashes were now "mine".  I had now become the involuntary owner of dog remains.  Throwing them out seemed disrespectful.  Mailing them to the rightful owner seemed creepy.  Burying them seemed like an OK idea, but the ground was starting to freeze, and I had zero time with a crazy toddler.  So they sat in the fireplace.

In December, we suddenly moved (a story I will tell another time).  I had planned to simply leave Abigail in her home, passing on the responsibility as the previous owner had to me.

One of my awesome friends who helped us move must have seen the tin, and not wanting us to leave anything along, tossed it in a box.  Imagine my surprise about a month after the move when I looked in a box and once again was confronted with the quandary of what to do with dog ashes.  We no longer have land to bury it on (we're in a condo).  Obviously, Abigail's owner doesn't want her back.

But we still have access to the old house...I'm considering placing Abigail in her back yard, behind a clump of trees.  Unless someone else has a better idea...

On a side note, I skipped Saturday.  I'm well ahead of my 40 bags timeline.  Levi had his first swimming class, two of my childhood friends got married (to each other!), and I was preparing to go back to work today (which went well!).  So I gave myself a day off.  However, I'm being careful not to lose my inertia, so I need to be rid of more bags this week.  There's no shortage of extra stuff around here!