Garden well

I was surprised at the weight of the ashes.

The funeral parlour had given them to me in an understated but nevertheless attractive cardboard purple bag with lilac swirls and matching silk cord handles. The canister itself was inside a further maroon plastic bag and, as I peeped in surreptitiously in the checkout queue at the Co-op, I was thankful for their discretion. After all, it's quite possible that some shoppers might have been put off by the thought of standing next to the cremated remains of my deceased great uncle as they paid for their packets of cheese and tea and milk and eggs.

By the time my late uncle and I arrived home the silk cord handles were digging into my palm and I was glad to put the bag containing his ashes down. The previous day, the funeral parlour had called my mother to ask her to come and pick Roy up. If she preferred not to, they said, no problem; he could be taken with the other uncollected remains and laid to rest in a communal grave. She in her turn had phoned me and now here we were, back in the little house by the seaside where Roy had moved with his own mother in 1940 and I had gratefully moved with Roo a month or so previously after the ex and I split up.

Uncles Roy's mother had died in 1966, a few months short of my own mother's wedding, and I knew that mum had always been very sad that her beloved Grandma wasn't able to be there in person to see her get married. Roy himself had continued to live in the house, alone, until he died in April 2004. Three and a half years after his death he was back in the house, but this time with me, the dog and a teenager for company.

I didn't really know what to do with the ashes, truth be told. I put them on the kitchen worktop, made a cup of tea and stood outside in the late summer sunshine pondering the question and having a smoke. Roy had loved this house, had lived here since he was twenty years old until time and illness caught up with him and carried him off at 84. A lifelong cricket devotee and one time top class umpire, he'd have smiled in his reticent way and declared that wasn't such a bad innings.

He'd have laughed with joy too at being back at the house again. He'd never wanted to leave it, always resisted the kindly-meant persuasion of health care professionals when they'd tried to convince him to relocate to a retirement flat or, later, a nursing home. Roy had been ill for a long time when he died, perhaps 14 or 15 years, but he always said no and they always went away frowning and puzzled at his refusal of their offer. They didn't know him well, didn't know that he, like the liking of olives or blue cheese, had never really acquired a taste for the company of others.

A few cups of tea and several cigarettes later I placed the urn of ashes in a little space on the floor beneath the boiler and to the left of the sink in the kitchen. And there they have remained, still in their handsome purple bag, for the last eighteen months. Until today.

I had decided some time back that, in keeping with Uncle Roy's wishes never to leave his little house by the seaside, I'd bury the urn and the ashes in the back garden. The house was built before running water on tap was a standard feature of the homes of working people and as such came complete with a well in the back garden. My mother, who spent some of her childhood living here, can just about remember when the well was still in use, although more as a novelty to amuse a child in the early 1950s than as a necessity.

At some point the well in the yard had been capped off. When I was renovating the house prior to moving in back in August of 2007, I'd uncovered the well. I'd always known it was there but had never actually seen it before. I'd removed and discarded the ill-fitting cover, leaving a round hole in the ground perhaps eighteen inches in diameter and the same in depth to the top of the concrete capping. Other than the dog losing his rubber bone and tennis ball in the hole on any number of occasions, the partly uncovered well had not caused any problems. And now it also provided a solution.

I'd put aside today for garden renovation and my first job was to set Uncle Roy to rest in a slightly more fitting place than under the sink next to the dog's bowl. I cleared debris and a few fallen bricks out of the well, levelled off the surface, and placed the urn inside. It was the first time too that I'd taken the urn of ashes right out of the funeral parlour bag. I was surprised to see it was maroon, made of plastic with a screw on lid, and with an ornate label on the front giving Roy's name and the date of his cremation - 7th April 2004. Almost five years to the day.

I carried buckets full of top soil from the end of the garden and filled the well right up until it was almost level with the rest of the yard. I raked it off smooth when I'd finished and sat down on the doorstep next to the well to have a cup of tea and a smoke. I'm going to buy a plant to go on top, perhaps a rose bush or a low-growing shrub or something of that kind. But I'm going to wait a week or so until the earth has settled in case I need to add more soil.

I don't think Uncle Roy will mind waiting for a bit; he's not going to leave his beloved little house again in any event.