Welcoming TJ back home

I'm always a bit uncertain whether to publish a post like this. Some people may find it morbid, but it's my blog and my pack, and really I don't find it morbid at all.

Last week I picked up TJ's ashes after having him cremated, and last night he joined the pack in the cabinet we call the columbarium. The cremains are returned in a nice wooden box with the dog's name engraved on it, and for some dogs I've simply left them in that box, generally adding the collar and tags that the dog wore. But we also collect suitable vessels, either boxes or pottery, for this purpose. We like to buy them, it gives something to look for at craft sales, and it gives variety to the columbarium.

I transferred both TJ's and Vince's ashes to pottery we had purchased but not yet used. Vince's came from Montana, I believe, and I think we got TJ's at Tamarack, a local craft marketing operation at a rest stop in West Virginia.

Once I move the ashes to a piece of pottery
I'm left with the question of what to do with
the nice, personalized wooden boxes.

There's enough in there that I don't always remember which belongs to which dog. I opened a couple today; there's always a tags or a collar that identifies the dog and I re-lived some very pleasant memories of a number of dogs that way. I wasn't sure which box was Gypsy's, although I had a guess and I was right. Sure enough, the first thing I saw upon opening it was the crown key chain on her collar, because Gypsy was Queen of the Universe. Cabell and Bremo are in matching boxes, which seemed appropriate for those two boys. There are fosters in there too, who never made it out of foster care. And there's our cats too; we aren't just about dogs.

TJ's urn in the middle. I think that's Jeremy's on the right.

Actually, looking over the shelves is looking back on and re-living the past 25 or so years of my life. Each pot, box, or urn came about by a sad moment, but to me they don't represent a loss, they represent a life. There's far more good and happy memories associated with each life than the moment of loss.

This is TJ's urn, with his collar and tags.

Center section of the columbarium. There is
also a beautiful pot sitting on top that didn't
fit inside.

The right section. Vince' urn is the tall one
on the second shelf from the bottom, on the
right, with collar wrapped around it.

This shows the entire cabinet. The left side still has Fiesta
in it so there is still room for expansion.