This is the next (hopefully final) chapter of the story that was begun in my last blog.
To recap: My father passed away of dementia in February 2019 at the age of 93. His end-of-life wishes were to donate his body to medical research and then be cremated and his ashes returned to us so we could spread them at locations important to him.
On the day of his death in 2019 my father’s body was transported to a Boston area medical school/hospital where the plan was that he would be worked on for about 15 months and then cremated and then we would be notified that we could have him returned. The end of the 15-month timeframe coincided with the onset of Covid; unsurprisingly, we did not hear anything about my father’s remains as a result of hospitals being overwhelmed with the chaos of COVID.
Earlier this month my mother mentioned that her one goal for 2023 was to find my father’s remains. Some of my siblings had unsuccessfully called and emailed the body donation program previously but we had learned nothing more about my father’s current location. I offered to track him down for her. Using the contact information she provided I emailed the person in charge of the body donation program. He called me later that day!
Rob, the body donation program manager, assured me that my father’s cremains were locked in a vault in his office. That was reassuring! We made arrangements to have Rob drop off the cremains at my house. On the designated drop-off day Rob showed up and handed me a surprisingly small box. He mentioned at least three times that “he was great for us!”. I was happy that my father was well-behaved for all this time and, more importantly, that his body made a contribution to medical science.
The outside of the box showed that the body had been cremated in January 2020 so I can only imagine that the pandemic was instrumental in causing the delay in getting the remains back to us. Another unintended consequence of COVID.
We have him back now and he is safely with my mother at her place until we have a family celebration to complete his final wishes. She reminded me that she is also planning to donate her body to medicine through the same program my father used. At least I now have the phone number of the person in charge so she doesn’t linger in a vault in an office for 3 years!
As my father would say, “All’s well that ends well”!
I’m sorry for your loss, it never gets easy. I’m glad that your father was “well-behaved” while in their hands and now back in your families’ hands. Peace and cyber hugs to you and your family.