Elise Swan's Ashes

I met Laury at an art opening this evening. She was assisting the gallery owner, putting out the cookies and the cheese and crackers, opening wine bottles. I was there to take pictures for one of the artists. It was a women's artists group, opening a show in a gallery owned by a woman on International Women's Day. It was a great idea but a kind of torment for me because I don't drink, I don't make small talk, and I don't even like to think about art as a commodity. But I complimented Laury on the cookies, and that got her talking about what they did with her mother's ashes.

"My mom was all about Brownies, Girl Scouts, kids. She'd do anything for me and my two sisters, but it wasn't just us. She was a friend to kids everywhere, and she loved Girl Scout cookies, especially thin mints. She was the kind of person kids are drawn to, and she always helped us sell our Girl Scout cookies. They used to be fifty cents a box. Now they're four dollars, but they're the same they always were.

"My mom died in January, 2012. She was eighty-seven, and we were all there. It was pure luck, because my younger sister lives in Alaska and my elder sister lives in Australia. My dad had passed some years earlier, but we'd gotten together that week, I guess somehow we knew it was coming, so we were all with her, and it was so peaceful we weren't even sure when it happened. Well, I wasn't sure, because I was behind her. My sister who was in front, she saw something. She said, 'I think she's gone.'

"We knew she wanted to be cremated, but they asked us about an urn or a box or what, and it was my younger sister who thought of it. Such a brilliant idea. We could put her ashes in a thin mints box! That was so her.

"So we got some of her things: her Bible, one of her gardening tools, some things that meant a lot to her, and they said we could cremate them with her, so the ashes would all mix together. And we got a whole case of thin mints, because you get a lot of ashes, you know, and we took this big box, this Girl Scouts thin mints cookie case to the funeral home, and we kept out three little thin mints boxes. So most of her ashes went into the big Girl Scouts cookie case, and each of us got one small thin mints box to keep, full of her ashes. It just felt right, and it made us laugh, and she would have loved that.

"After the cremation, we went to pick up her ashes, and it turns out there were two people there with our last name, which is Swan. They said, 'Which one are you?' And we said, 'We're the ones with the Girl Scout cookies,' and they said 'Oh that one!' They'd had people bring in a lot of different containers, but they said it was the first time they ever had a thin mints box."

I asked Laury if I could post this story online, and she said, "Yes, sure, and use her name. My mom's name was Elise Swan. Be sure and put her name in, because she deserves that. I think she'd like this story being told on Women's Day."

P.S. Laury sent this post to her sisters, and the one in Australia has joined blip and leaves this beautiful comment:

"I am the 'elder cygnet' in this family.... I have my portion of my mother's ashes in a coffee cup that I had made for her with Swanny, her Girl Scout nickname, on it. The small Thin Mints cookie box is right behind it! She was an amazing woman, much loved by those whose lives she impacted, and to read the words of strangers who comment so lovingly is extremely emotional, in the joyful sense, for me...." Thank you for those wonderful comments.