Final wishes denied

This is how I will remember Alison. (Photos: David Baker)

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For Alison, even in death, a final indignity

       By David Baker

      First posted Jan. 28, 2025

   In the last weeks of her life, Alison had two wishes:  First, that she reconnect with her sister Mariah, and second, that she be buried, not cremated.

   Both wishes were denied.  

   Despite being told that the sister she hadn’t spoken to since 1994 was close to death, there was no call from Mariah .

   I was in contact with Alison virtually every day for nine years, spending countless hours assisting her.  But not one of her family members asked me if I knew what she wanted when she was gone. That was even after I had told her only daughter that Alison had said when I asked abut her final wishes that she didn’t want to be cremated.  Her wish was for a final resting place in her own space on this earth.

  And now I have independently confirmed it:  she was cremated.

  I also know a memorial service was held for her.  But members of her so-called family didn’t tell me where or when it would  be.  Evidently, all those years when I was her sole support meant nothing to these callous people.

   All four of her children did come to her home shortly before she died and separately spent about five minutes at her bedside. 

   It was too late.  After they left I said to her wasn’t it nice that her eldest child, Shawn —  who had’t seen her since at least 2015 — was here.

   And looking confused, she said: “Shawn was here?”

   But I was able to tell her while she was still able to hear me and respond that she would not be forgotten.  And despite her family’s efforts to erase her from this earth, she won’t be;  her spirit will live on in my heart  — and through my unpublished collection of photos, videos and an audio recording of a 90-minute wide-raging conversation we had in 2015 in which she recalled harrowing details of the life-changing trauma inflicted on her by her mother when she was a child, and memories of her sister, her brother, her first husband and her four children.

   Against her wishes, Alison has been reduced to smoke and throw-away ashes.  But she will still be seen and heard.  After the nine years she was in my life, it’s the least I can do for her.

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