ashes to ashes

this week my mom called me from "the U.K." she had taken off work to join her husband on his trip.

during the first part of her voice mail, she told me about how beautiful the hotel was. then she told me that her husband had just "distributed" his recently-deceased father's ashes in the bay.

my mom has never really liked her father in law, so when he died she was pretty blasé about the whole thing saying, I'm not taking off work to help clean up his stuff at their house; I've got too much to do to get ready for my trip to the U.K. so i was pretty surprised when she even mentioned the ashes. i don't know my mom's husband's whole story (i've tuned most of it out -- with good reason from the parts i've picked up) so i'm sure it was a strange/strained relationship. and i understand that death is dealt with in various ways and i would never question how one person gets through it all versus another. but what i really enjoyed was that in the same breath that she described her husband finally putting his father to rest, she said:

Then we bought bathing suits and went into hot tub and steam room. It was so lovely and fun. I'll send you pictures when we get home. 

the most confusing part of the voicemail came right at the end when she was telling me when they were coming home:

We're watching the ashes right now. Today the airport is closed but hopefully it'll be open by Thursday.

the ashes, in this case, were not that of her father in law (and yes, it took me a minute to figure it out), but instead  from iceland's eyjafjallajokull volcano, which recently erupted and created a whole cloud of ash over much of western europe, delaying many flights.

luckily, she didn't have to wait for those ashes and they hadn't been aggravating her for years. she flew safely home this afternoon:

Hi Kids, just wanted you to know that I'm back in the US of A.  A good trip, gave N a bit of closure, will tell you about it when we talk.

Love you

MOM