When Grief Spills Over: What Spilling My Dad’s Ashes Taught Me About Grief, Ageing, and Love
Loss, like domestic life, is never neat and tidy
Late one evening last winter, I noticed a stain on the glass of a small coffee table. The one that sits on the cream rug. It was one of those moments when distraction masquerades as productivity, so I decided to clean it. As I removed the lamp and other objects from the table, my hand brushed against a small porcelain ink pot.
The ink pot contained a tiny amount of my dad’s ashes.
It tipped over. The lid came loose. And just like that, dad’s cremains spilled out onto the high-pile cream rug.
Light grey ashes on fluffy cream wool did nothing for my complexion — and even less for my emotions.
How do you retrieve a dead man’s ashes from a shaggy rug? I’ll tell you how: with a teaspoon.
So there I was at silly o’clock at night, laugh-crying on my hands and knees, scooping my father from the depths of my grief, now embodied by a rug, with the least dignified kitchen utensil imaginable.
If the universe had a plan or a sense of humour, it got lost on me.
But there I was anyway.
The Absurd Domesticity of Death
No one tells you this part about death: that it doesn’t stay confined to urns or ceremonies or photo albums. When it moves in with you, it also moves into your carpets, your cupboards — even your quiet Tuesday evenings.
Nothing I’d ever experienced prepared me for this particular tableau: me crouched over a rug on a wintery night with a teaspoon in hand, trying to gather up what was left of my dad.
There’s something darkly comic about the physicality of it all. Death isn’t always ceremonial; sometimes it’s logistical. Dusty. Manual. And sometimes it forces you to meet it on your knees.
Grief Isn’t Tidy
We’re taught to treat death as sacred and separate, something staged behind closed doors or confined to neat timelines. But grief doesn’t honor those rules. It barges in during housework, disguised as dust and clumsiness. It arrives in teaspoons.
I’d been cleaning absentmindedly while listening to a podcast when I nudged the ink pot. I swear it was barely more than a whisper of movement. And yet you’d think I had tipped over a bucketful of ashes.
Grief has a way of spreading far beyond its container.
At first, I froze. Then I swore. Then came the laugh-crying; the kind that feels both ridiculous and cathartic.
I thought caregiving ended when my dad passed away. But here I was again — still tending to him in some absurd way, still trying to gather him together after he had scattered himself across my life.
A Woman’s Role in Grief
Women are often the quiet administrators of death: we plan services, clear houses, label boxes, keep photos safe for future generations. And when no one is looking? We get on our knees with teaspoons and do what needs to be done.
There’s power in that kind of caretaking, a power we don’t talk about enough because it doesn’t look glamorous or heroic. It looks like laugh-crying at midnight over a rug while everyone else is asleep.
Isn’t that ageing too? The slow realization that no one tells you how strange loss becomes as you grow older? That grief takes up space — not just in your heart, but in your home, your schedule, even your body? That at 50-something you can feel both like an adult woman and still someone’s daughter?
The Laugh-Cry
By the end of it all, I was still crouched over the rug with my teaspoon, eyes swollen from crying but laughing anyway. The kind of laugh that punctures grief just enough to let some air back in.
And honestly? Wherever he is now, I’m fairly certain my dad was holding his sides watching the whole debacle unfold: ashes akimbo on cream wool; his daughter laugh-crying into eternity; life refusing to be either neat or dignified.
One Scoop at a Time
If you’ve ever laughed through tears or found yourself tending to the dead in the middle of your to-do list, know this:
You’re not doing it wrong.
Grief isn’t tidy because life isn’t tidy, and maybe filial love isn’t either.
Maybe love looks like showing up anyway: crying and laughing in equal measure; scooping up what’s left; picking up the pieces one teaspoon at a time.
If this story stayed with you, feel free to share it with someone who might need a teaspoon-sized reminder that they’re not alone in their grief.
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I know that last cry, my dear one. And I love everything about your writing and your point. Hugs and kisses.
My dad, who was a writer, wanted his ashes mixed into the ink of his last book. I could never get the publishers to agree, though! Great story, Stéphanie.