Consummatio, 2002

I rolled him into the furnace

where, in two or three hours,

his body was consumed at 1500

degrees and reduced to
some four pounds of ash,
including the cardboard coffin.

According to the Cremation Association of
North America, it may have been necessary to
open the chamber and reposition remains to
promote complete combustion.

His father once did that,
repositioned him
from St. Louis to Stony Brook,
hoping he’d ignite;
then Westminster College to kindle,
then to war where he did burn
and law school where he did burn
and he burned always and
in all these places he burned,
Yet was not consumed.

I felt the arsonist’s awful fear and thrill;
but God forbid an undertaker’s
eyes and hands should undertake for
me, whose loving, indifferent,
angry, greedy, worshiping eyes
must be the last to love his beauty;
whose helpless, loving, grasping,
hands the ones to slide him into
the chamber and pull the lever and
set the final fire.

According to the Cremation Association of

North America, when the chamber
is swept clean of remains
there will be found non-combusted
fragments of bone that will be
“further processed” into uniform
particles and rejoined with the ashes.

Before I can let him go,
I will find and process what fragments
I can, left from his burning.


Eleven years ago my sister and I slid a cardboard coffin that contained the body of my father into a furnace. Before we did so I stuck my head inside to see what the space wherein he would burn looked like. To my surprise, it looked like home. It felt welcoming. This place felt like the right place for him to go. I knew instantly that I wanted my remains consumed in that same furnace, or one very like it.

My grandfather built a Santa Fe room his St. Louis home. The walls were earth-tone plaster, the saltillo tile floor was covered with Indian rugs, Santa Fe artists were represented on the walls, there was Santa Clara pottery, books about the Southwest, and a kiva-style fireplace in one corner, along with little kiva incense burners that kept the room smelling like pinon smoke. Beginning in 1939, my grandparents would escape the oppressive heat and humidity of St. Louis every summer and spend those months at 7,000 feet, in cooler, drier Santa Fe. They fell in love with Northern New Mexico and took pieces of it back to St. Louis every year to keep the spirit of this place alive at home. As a child, it was my favorite room of all the rooms I knew. It was a comforting place, felt elemental, made of the same stuff I was. I knew we were made of mud and meant to live in mud houses.

My early visits to Santa Fe from Denver with my parents to see my grandparents reinforced this feeling. Santa Fe looked and felt like home because that room in St. Louis felt like home. The Pueblo-revival architectural style, though partially manufactured for the sake of image and tourism, still communicated warmth and community. Though most structures (none above four stories) appeared to be adobe, many were plaster covered concrete or brick, though many, many old and newer adobes survived. And my impression of Santa Feans of all ethnic backgrounds was uniformly positive. Nice people lived there. I arrived here almost three years ago, intending to stay for three months, as my grandparents had. After a divorce and the resulting debilitating insanity and sadness, it became a place of refuge.

I live with my partner, Maria-Elena, in an smallish old adobe. It has the same feel as that of my father's brick-lined furnace had, my grandfather's room. The walls are three feet thick and made of mud. An outter wall surroundes the house. The interior walls are beautifully plastered, and covered with Maria-Elena's art. The ceilings are vegas and slats. The kitchen is tiny, the furniture basic. The floors are pine. It is a  humble, beautiful place. Rich and famous people live here or have homes here. Some of these places are astoundingly beautiful inside and out. I am very happy here in my small furnace, my room, my town, where my father and grandfather feel welcome and visit often.

Copyright 2013, Theodore T Patterson