Common Ground

   My mother was Dorothy Ruth Baker. She was born Dorothy Ruth Harris, though, and I think it's likely I've seen this name actually more often than her married name. I've had the opportunity several times over the last few months to sit down and go through all the old family photograph albums and have seen writings of hers and pictures of her where she has either signed her maiden name or it has been written there for her.
   My mother passed away in 1973, from a drug overdose. She had taken several weeks worth of sleeping pills and antidepressants all at once and died in her sleep. This was not the first time she had overdosed and she had been treated for depression for several years by the time she actually passed.

My Mum

   I was twenty when my mum died and had gotten to the point where I was essentially taking care of myself. I believe my Dad and my brother Bob were also doing the same thing. It almost seemed to me at the time that her dying was the only logical conclusion to all the things that had been going on in her life up to that point.
   She was cremated and we had a memorial service for her at the church we attended. Her ashes ended up at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery here in London. I had the occasion to drive by the cemetery quite often over the intervening years and I would look at the building that housed the crematorium and I always assumed her ashes were in there somewhere.
   About eight or nine years ago, on a whim, I decided to stop in at the cemetery and find out exactly where her ashes were so that I could see their location. What I discovered was that her ashes were not in the crematorium at all, they had actually been interred in the Common Ground section of the cemetery. I was given a map to this section but was told that they could only tell me approximately where in that section her ashes had been buried. In a subsequent trip, I was told there was actually a small metal tag with a number on it denoting a more precise location in Common Ground and I was able to find this but only after much digging around through the underbrush beneath a hedge.
   This discovery opened up many questions for me and re-awakened some strong emotions at the same time. I think I had somehow compartmentalized all that had gone on with my mother in my head and tucked it away somewhere, conveniently. This new enlightenment as to the disposition of her remains brought stuff back out in the open all over again.

Mum and Dad on their wedding day.

   I had always thought of common ground as the place where all the poor people ended up, all the unidentifiable bodies and where the socially rejected people went as a last resort. And this was where I found my mother's remains.
   For whatever reason, as a family we had never really talked about my Mum's final wishes and did not discuss her final resting place. It was only in my head that I assumed I knew where this was. I do remember that, at the time, we were involved with the Memorial Society in London. The Memorial Society was, and still is, a service that offered an alternative to lavish and expensive funerals. What this meant at the time was that Dad and a family friend actually had to go down to the Memorial Society and build the container my mum's body would be cremated in. Everything about my world seemed surreal at the time and the fact that my Dad had to do this seemed only part and parcel with everything else.


Common Ground in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery

   Thirty years later, as an adult, suddenly I felt as though I needed and wanted to know how all this had happened this way. One day not that long ago I had the opportunity to bring up the subject with Dad. I had been wondering for awhile as to the best way to talk to him about it, it's not the usual kind of thing that pops up naturally in a conversation. Finally, one morning after golf, I was able to interject one of those "oh, by the way" kinds of questions. We had been talking, I think, about his own funeral wishes and I asked him about my mum. I told him what I had discovered myself by going to the cemetery.
   He also was unaware that her ashes had ended up in common ground, though he was not surprised. He then went on to explain in more detail their involvement with the Memorial Society at the time and how things worked back in those days.


Where my Mum's ashes are, 7 to 8 feet left of the bench in the above photo

   More than anything, though, he said that it had always been my mother's wish that there not be anywhere or anything marking her final resting place. She had felt strongly that her physical body was of no consequence to anyone and didn't want her remains to end up being a focal point. I suppose it is a bit of a cliché, but she was happy to live on in people's hearts and memories, as much as anything else.
   To me, this sufficed as an explanation. And, knowing my mother, it made sense. At the time I discovered the whereabouts of her remains, I was all for having them dug up and either re-interred, with a marker, or scattered somewhere appropriate. A little time removed from the discovery and the recent death of my Dad, though, has given me a slightly different perspective on honouring final wishes. So I strongly suspect my Mum's ashes will stay right where they've been for almost forty years now and that's really okay with me. It is as it should be.