By Linda Ross 
I found another stage, or maybe it’s a phase of and in grief. It’s the silence. Grief has an unspoken silence. It’s always there, but at times it is especially prevalent—often at night but not always. For me, it’s silence at its most fundamental core. It’s a quiet like none other. There’s nothing you can really do about it other than face it, talk to it, see it, and if you’re someone like me, write about it.
It’s 5:23 a.m. I’ve been up since 4:23 contemplating the silence and deciding if I should get up and write. I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately, more than usual. Maybe because I’m expecting a package of a small portion of his ashes. These were not his exact wishes. He chose to have his ashes spread in the San Francisco Bay, amid zero pomp and circumstance and with no family present. Those wishes go along with his not wanting—literally demanding—no funeral. I went around him, so to speak, and bought a little urn to put a small portion of his ashes in so that someday, somehow when my brothers, my children, and my nieces and nephews can all go to Hawaii together, we can spread those ashes at his favorite spot. I think he would be okay with that.
My dad despised funerals. I always knew that, but I never knew why until he shared the reason with me about a year ago. I don’t know why I had never asked. His father died when he was 20 years old. At the funeral, there was an open casket. There was his father, all dressed up in it. My dad sat there watching as his mother, sister, and many others walked up one by one and sobbed—hysterical, awful sobs. After a short time, my father couldn’t stand it and got up and walked out. He couldn’t take it.
He went to very few funerals ever again. And if he told us once, he told us a thousand times that when he died, there would not be a funeral of any kind. He said if we had something to say, we had better say it while he was alive.
I never questioned his wishes. I understood and respected them wholly. It wasn’t lost on me that if my dad had allowed for a funeral, it would have been a packed house. That didn’t really matter though as there would not be one. And while I believe funerals often provide comfort for the living, this was simply something he adamantly opposed. He had felt pain sitting at his father’s open casket ceremony, pain he wished on no one. In life and in death, my father was humble and proud. His wishes, his way.
P.S. Anderson Cooper has two seasons of (an eight-episode each) podcast called “All There Is,” and I highly recommend it. It’s emotional and heavy, yet beautiful and touching. Bring a Kleenex, but I can promise you will walk away glad you listened and with a profoundly deeper connection to others, many of whom have experienced both the pain and gift—yes gift—of grief.
Originally published on the author’s Substack
by Ashley LeCompte 
