I just loved the last laugh with Mum and Dad

THE OTHER day I finally scattered my parents’ ashes. My mother died 21 years ago and my father in 2016. Since then they’d resided quietly under my desk. My mother was in a red plastic receptacle which was the shape and size of one of those old-fashioned Callard & Bowser’s sweet jars. My father was in a cardboard box.

It was nice having them close by and organising a big family ash-scattering became increasingly difficult. That’s because I wanted to do it in a place that would have meant something to my parents when they were young. And that was some distance away.

Last year Peter, an old family friend, moved near to where my parents had met, courted and married. I mentioned my ash dilemma and he immediately said: “Bring Betty and Lionel down for the weekend and we’ll do it on Sunday morning, because I know exactly the place.”

My children approved and found a piece of poetry which I was to read out loud. I was also under strict instructions to bear in mind the ash-scattering scene in The Big Lebowski when the wind sends Donny’s ashes all over Jeff Bridges. Thanks, kids.

It was a misty, autumn morning with the promise of the sun breaking through when the English landscape looks at its most beautiful.we parked the car and walked the last uphill bit.who knew ashes would be so heavy?

We’d imagined that early on a Sunday morning this magical vantage point would be deserted. Not so. Merry groups of hikers kept appearing over the brow of the hill, along with golfers (there was a course nearby which would have delighted my dad) and a small herd of grazing cattle.

“Piccadilly Circus would be quieter,” said Peter’s wife. We got the giggles like schoolchildren in church. Not wanting to make this a public ceremony we plunged into an overgrown wooded area and found a huge blackberry bush. Mummy loved making blackberry jam. There was also a circlet of bound twigs on the ground.

“Left over from some pagan festival I’ll be bound,” said Peter. “It’s a sign.”

I’d more or less got my breath back by now after the punishing walk uphill so I fished out my phone and read the poem. Then we unleashed the ashes and made them as unobtrusive as possible. As we did so the sun burst through the mist, the sky turned blue and the world my parents had known in their youth was spread out before us: fields, farms, rivers, church spires, valleys and hedgerows touched with bright gold.

It wasn’t an unduly solemn moment. If Betty and Lionel were watching they’d have had a giggle as well. It was nice to release them.together again at last. It was perfect.