Exactly a month after dad died, I found myself in North Carolina again. I missed my family, my dad’s house needed to be cleaned, my dad’s cremains were ready, and I just needed to get away from DC.

My dad’s cremains were split into two nondescript boxes. I kept both boxes on my lap in the car and I could not stop thinking about how a big tall man had been reduced to two boxes of ashes. Ashes to ashes. It struck me as odd, how as a child I used to sit on my father’s lap and now the roles were reversed with him sitting on my lap.

We did a lot at my father’s house. Food donated to a food bank. Junk discarded including a huge tub of individually wrapped plastic cutlery and a million copies of a single document denouncing Mormonism in favor of Christianity. Three bedrooms…