Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Death is strange.
It is also completely ordinary.
When actors die, it feels personal. They lived in our living rooms. They marked seasons of our lives. When they go, a version of us goes with them. But unless we truly knew them, that grief is still the easier kind. It trends. It gathers headlines. It moves on.
The other kind does not trend…
I am writing this in the quiet space between Ash Wednesday and a funeral. In the Christian tradition, ashes are pressed on your forehead and you hear the words: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. It is not meant to depress you. It is meant to wake you up.
My uncle was a Cleveland firefighter. The kind of man who ran toward danger for a living. Years earlier, his son, my cousin, also a Cleveland firefighter and one of the best people I know, died in the line of duty.
Their stories are not mine to tell. Even more, their memories deserve more than a mention in a short story or column. But the short of it is, I loved them and I admired them both.
At the funeral home, someone tapped my shoulder and asked if I would serve as a pallbearer.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a teenager sweeping floors on construction sites for my uncle. Learning what it meant to build something with your hands. This strong, charismatic man teaching me how to work.
Now I was carrying him?
As I felt the weight of the casket in my hands, a question I wrote down at twelve years old came back to me. I had asked a teacher, If the brain stops, does everything stop? Or are we more like radios? If the radio breaks, does the music still exist somewhere else?
She told me she could not answer that. One day, she said, I would find out.
Standing in the cemetery while the bagpipes played in the background to honor my uncle, I still did not “know.”
But I felt closer to that answer, to that truth, and to my faith than I ever have in my life.
📖 Stories in a Snap is a weekly series of short, written stories by Aaron Calafato, adapted directly from his award-winning 7 Minute Stories Podcast. Each piece begins as a story told out loud and is reshaped for the page, so you can read it in just a few minutes.
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