Grief and Memory Theme Analysis

As Chris drives his mother to a lake where they plan to scatter his later father, Alan’s, ashes, he endures her constant chatter about her marriage to Alan, as well as Alan and Chris’s relationship. The rosy way she portrays these memories, Chris thinks, is revisionist to the point of being offensive. He recognizes, though, that this is a product of his mother’s grief: in order to come to terms with her husband’s death, his mother is rewriting the story of their lives in a way that makes her feel better. As Chris comes to realize why his mother is doing this, he also recognizes that as annoying and untrue as his mother’s stories are, they may serve a purpose. Misremembering his father like this is comforting in the midst of grief—but the story also suggests that acknowledging the truth of their family history, as painful as that might be, may also be a way for Chris and his mother to move on from his father’s death.

At first, Chris is offended by his mother’s exaggerated (or downright untrue) stories about his father, as they gloss over the pain that Chris’s parents caused over the years. Chris is gay, but he never came out to his parents because they made him feel ashamed of his sexuality and lack of stereotypically masculine traits as a child. For instance, when 12-year-old Chris was uninterested in going fishing or having man-to-man conversations during a camping trip, his father said, “I don’t know what’s bloody wrong with you.” For Chris, then, his mother’s desire to gloss over this painful history is hurtful. She doesn’t seem to know the full extent of Chris’s father’s thinly-veiled homophobia—but whether intentional or not, the way she sugarcoats the past (talking about how much his father enjoyed the father-son fishing trips, for instance) makes Chris feel like she’s minimizing his difficult childhood. Chris’s anger shows that his mother is hurting him by reworking the family’s history in this way, whether she means to or not. Her inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the way she and her husband judged and mistreated Chris in the past alienates her son and strains their relationship even more.

However, Chris’s mother likely isn’t trying to be offensive through these retellings. Rather, reimagining the past is a way for her to grieve and reframe her memories of her husband to make them more palatable. For instance, when Chris’s mother focuses on how much the fishing trips meant to Chris’s father, she can more easily gloss over the fact that she and her husband did real harm to their son by shaming him for who he is. This suggests that, on some level, Chris’s mother understands how difficult Chris’s childhood was and perhaps even regrets her own complicity in making it so difficult. Again, while this doesn’t excuse Chris’s parents’ thinly-veiled homophobia, it opens up the possibility that Chris’s mother wants to improve her relationship with him. Similarly, Chris’s mother has begun to talk very differently about her marriage since her husband’s death, versus how she spoke about it when he was still alive. Before Chris’s father died, his mother resented her husband and reacted dramatically every time he did something wrong. Their marriage, at least from Chris’s perspective, didn’t seem happy. But now, Chris’s mother talks about her late husband as being merely “bumbling” and full of good intentions. By reworking her relationship to her husband through these stories, Chris’s mother seems to be trying to cast their marriage in a better light. This, presumably, makes it easier for her to grieve when she can essentially focus on her husband’s positive aspects—invented though they may be—and feel more at peace with the past and with his death.

But “Ashes” suggests that these attempts to reframe history can only go so far. It’s important, the story suggests, that Chris and his mother also acknowledge the pain they experienced in the past. Chris’s tone undergoes a major shift when, to his surprise, his mother brings up the fact that his father disapproved of her smoking habit—to the point that she eventually quit to appease him. This seems to be the only entirely truthful thing she says about her deceased husband’s behavior over the course of the story. And at its heart, it’s an admission that she and her husband didn’t have a perfect relationship—just as Chris and his father’s relationship was similarly imperfect. Indeed, Chris privately acknowledges that his strained relationship with his father wasn’t one-sided—he could have been kinder to his father, as well. Even though Chris resents his parents for shaming him throughout his childhood, this nevertheless speaks to the idea that nobody in the family behaved perfectly. In this way, Chris’s mother’s rosy memories seem to open Chris up to acknowledging his father’s good-hearted efforts and his own flaws, just as Chris’s refusal to sugarcoat the past seems to subtly prompt his mother to remember the imperfect aspects of the past. Just after this, Chris’s mother shows emotion for the first time that day, openly weeping and repeating “Goodbye, Alan” as Chris scatters his father’s ashes on the lake. Honestly coming to terms with the past—which involves considering both the positive and the negative aspects of their lives—is what allows Chris’s mother to grieve in an authentic and cathartic way. Acknowledging past mistakes and lingering pain, then, is just as important in the grieving process as remembering the good times.

Grieving and remembering a deceased loved one, the story shows, doesn’t just mean rewriting history or sticking only to unhappy, regretful memories. Rather, grief is complex—and, within the world of “Ashes,” Chris and his mother handle it by calling on a combination of the two. The story ends with a rare moment of tenderness between Chris and his mother: he asks her if she’s okay and tenderly brushes ash off of her lapel. The gesture is simple but nonetheless significant for the estranged mother and son. The story thus implies that by being understanding of how the other person is handling their grief, Chris and his mother will be able to cope with their loss and even improve their relationship going forward.