Stay. That’s what we want when we’ve lost a loved one. We want them to STAY. If only for a minute, an hour. To feel again their embrace. To kiss their cheek. To listen to one more word of love, or kindness, or wisdom, or humor. Just, stay… and we have to decide what to do with our grief.

And the pain. Even over the years when it stabs us afresh and reminds us anew of what we have lost. The day comes when we think we are past it and then we read or see something and suddenly are assaulted by a memory and it is as if we are back in that moment, when we lost the one we loved.

And so we gather at important moments, not only in tribute to grandparents or parents or children or sisters or brothers or spouses or friends but also to figure out what to do with the grief that never fully goes away. So what do we do?

We listen to beautiful music. To gentle sounds. We recite prayers and still, we do not always know what to do.

Become that which you have lost.

For some of us we mourn someone who never gave the love that we wanted and so it is our task in this world to give that love that we did not receive to someone else so that the legacy of love not given will be love given. For others it is all the love that we did receive; all the goodness, all the kindness, all the wisdom, all the help. And we know that only way to honor the memory of the person that we have lost is to give that to someone else to become what we have lost because the measure of our loss is the measure of our blessing. There is no grief without there first being a blessing.

And there is no sadness without a previous richness. And so it is our task to use our grief as a springboard. Our sadness is a stage and our grief a beginning because we know that sooner or later we will be there, too. None of us will live forever and the question won’t be to what degree or depth of pain did we feel for those that are lost, it will be to what did we evolve; and what goodness and kindness did we express to those who are still here?

So if you have gathered to pay tribute; remember to embrace the recollection of someone or many whom you have lost, don’t neglect to pay them the greatest tribute which is to be the kind of person of whom they would be proud.

- as delivered by Rabbi Wolpe and listened to by me at this morning’s Kever Avot services, Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills

Goodbye, “What would your last meal be?” Hello, “Where do you want your ashes scattered?”

In idle moments over many years, I have pondered the first question, which amounts to figuring out what my favorite food is.

This is a difficult proposition because I am pretty much an equal opportunity glutton.

This endeavor is also compromised by my inability to dwell upon my demise for more than two seconds at a time. This extends to walking to the left in a bookstore if, on the right, sits a display of those warped 100 Things to Do/Eat/Visit Before You Die titles.

But more and more people are being cremated these days – from 4 percent of Americans before 1980 to 39 percent now, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

And so ruminations about where one would want to be scattered are cutting-edge. I even found the question on a list of “suggested conversation starters” that includes, “If you could lock someone in a room for a day and torment him, who would it be and what would you do?” and “What vegetable do you resemble?”

As a result, I’ve been thinking seriously but fleetingly about the scattering of some or part of the five pounds of material that result from the cremation of the average-size human.

This is particularly true for “wildcat scattering,” which makes the news now and then because it is the term for the rogue, unpermitted distribution of any amount of material that we commonly call “cremains” or “ashes.” For example, in January the executors of the estate of Elaine Kaufman, the famously cantankerous owner of a restaurant on a fashionable section of Manhattan’s Second Avenue that caters to the rich and celebrities, were told by New York City officials that it was illegal to honor the desire she stated in her will to have her cremains scattered on the street near her establishment. About the same time, the family of a murdered Portuguese journalist honored his wishes by (illegally) pouring his cremated remains down a subway grate in Times Square. (There has been no explanation of why he stipulated this grimy site.)

There’s the phenomenon at California’s Disneyland and Florida’s Magic Kingdom, where the maintenance staffs close down the rides and reportedly use a vacuum specially designed to clean up cremation ashes illegally dumped among the ghosts at the Haunted Mansion; and, presumably with a “yo, ho, ho,” at the Pirates of the Caribbean rides by their friends or relatives.(News reports do not include the “It’s a Small World (after all)” boat cruise in lists of favorite Disney dumping sites. Perhaps its tune is too much of an earworm even for the deceased.)

Despite my reluctance to embrace the issue, many questions arise when, unbidden, it sneaks into my brain. Should it be a place I’ve been to and where I’ve felt passionate, at one with myself and the universe?

Hmm… perhaps a certain windswept beach near Monterey, or around the bacon display or in the mayonnaise aisle of a supermarket? Or maybe somewhere I’ve wanted to be, doing something I never dared? The Catskills in the summer, dancing with Patrick Swayze in the last scene of Dirty Dancing leaps to mind because my life would have been very different if I had ever had the confidence to do that, as well as the Mashed Potato.

Should I use the great power of my death to order my descendants to perform acrobatic, illegal, or dangerous post-mortem activities even if they ignored all sorts of things I had asked them to do while I was alive? Maybe not. A woman honoring her sister’s wishes to be tossed into the sea off the Connemara coast slipped into the ocean and drowned.

Kelly Murtaugh formed the International Scattering Society (ISS) in 2005 to take the logistical and emotional burdens off the shoulders of the survivors of people who designate scattering. Murtaugh was haunted by her deceased father’s request to “take a little piece of me everywhere with you when you travel.” She and a co-founder put that together with the national rise in cremation rates and the increase in the desire to personalize funeral ceremonies. ISS will research whether a permit is technically required to lawfully scatter ashes at any given site – and then she and her international network of helpers will perform the service.

But here are her tips for do-it-yourselfers:

• Technically, scattering a person’s ashes on uninhabited public land is OK, but lots of popular private and public places require a permit or ban it altogether.

• Requests for permits at ball parks are generally turned down. An unofficial explanation of this is that players would be spooked by the possibility of inhaling somebody’s Aunt Mary as they slide into home base or make a touchdown. Still, the potential to causing a scene or a disruption may be the biggest reason for the denial of a request to scatter ashes.

• New York’s Central Park is fair game, but if you’re caught flinging relatives into the air at the Grand Canyon or the Statue of Liberty without a permit, you could be arrested. Murtaugh also cautions that the most common hazard of ash-scattering is “blow-back.” “You must always check the wind. In particular, if you happen to be on a mountain, remember that there will be an updraft. Don’t scatter the entire contents [of the cremains container] in one swift motion. Scatter a little at a time. No matter what, you will probably get some ashes on yourself.” Murtaugh says she is eager for someone to ask her to take ashes to the top of Mt. Everest, which suggests another line of thinking. Where do I NOT want to be scattered? Not Mt. Everest, which is too high. Not outer space, where there is too much scary nothingness, or the open sea with scary everythingness in its depths — in addition to the seasickness factor. The only diversion I’ve had from this parlor game I’m playing in my head has come in the form of information that the cremation rate will rise to 60 percent by the year 2025. This means that some 675 tons of cremains could potentially be scattered then. We must get serious about dusting.

(Image: The Big Lebowski)