After my brother died, one of the most simple ‘death admin’ tasks was the hardest

On the notes section of my phone sits a rolling to-do list of life admin. It’s dotted with the regular behind-the-scenes jobs most 30-somethings have to do. Book two-year-old’s vaccinations. Buy four-year-old new sneakers. Get skin checked. Also on that list sits one job that’s been there for months and hasn’t been ticked off. It reads “Nice urn for Tim”.

Author Bella Brennan’s older brother Tim died in November 2021. Credit: Courtesy of Bella Brennan

My older brother Tim passed away in November 2021 and among the onslaught of confronting jobs that come with a death (organising a funeral, cancelling the paper trail of their life, finalising their estate) was one task I never anticipated would be such a horrifically hilarious admin item.

For 18 months, Tim lives in the dining room at my father’s home in a makeshift urn from the crematorium. It’s plain and white and looks like a piece of rolled-up cardboard you’d get from the newsagent for a school assignment. I put a candle next to it and he’s there, overlooking us at every family meal. It’s weird, but slowly we get used to it. Sometimes I take my daughters in to say hi to Uncle Tim and give him a little kiss.

He deserves better and we all know it, but no one can bring themselves to organise a proper urn. In fact, it’s a conversation that’s too sad to even discuss as a family.

One evening, my little brother remarks in passing that it’s about time we get Tim out of his dreary home and into something more dignified. I wholeheartedly agree.

So, being the mature 35-year-old I am, I outsource the job to my husband – a pragmatic, unaffected, good-in-a-crisis person. I send him a few links pulled together in a quick internet search with the vague brief to pick something “tasteful” in which we can send him on his merry way.

He deserves better and we all know it, but no one can bring themselves to organise a proper urn. In fact, it’s a conversation that’s too sad to even discuss as a family.

BELLA BRENNAN

But he can’t do it either. “I tried to a few times but I was terrified I would pick the wrong thing and your mum would disown me,” he confesses. Fair enough. You don’t want to cross your mother-in-law.

So back on my to-do list it lands.

I wonder about the correct search terms to find a nice urn. “Non-urn-y urns”? “Understated urns”? “Earnest urns”?

I message my dear friend Georgia, who lost her husband a few years ago and is in the know about all things urn. “Here’s a fun question for you. Urns. I think we’re finally ready to put Tim in a fancy one. Where did you find your beautiful one? Also, even the word ‘urn’ makes me shudder. I hate it.”

“Most absurd experience of my life, buying an urn,” she responds, before sending me the link to a very stylish homewares shop nearby.

It turns out that what I should have been searching for is a ginger jar. Classic, chic and, most importantly, the damn thing has a lid. We are on here!

I pull the trigger on a random Tuesday morning when I’m working from home and suddenly find myself with the willpower and motivation to just do it. I browse the ginger jars online and find a beautiful ceramic one that’s hand-painted in blue butterflies and flowers.

Maths has never been my strong point but I imagine it to be the same size as a large vase. Just to be safe, I pop the dimensions of the ginger jar into trusty old ChatGPT (27L x 27W x 48H … whatever that means) and ask if it would be a suitable size to house my brother.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” ChatGPT sympathetically begins, before carrying out its mathematical equations and surmising, “Typically, adult urns range from three to five litres in capacity. So based on the calculations, the urn you mentioned should be large enough to hold an adult male’s ashes.”

Bingo. I add to cart.

When the urn finally arrives, I imagine doing an ironic urn unboxing for TikTok. “Hey guys! Use the discount code #bertandurnie25 to get your hands on your own unique creation!”

I lift it out of the box and heave it onto my kitchen table to survey it. It’s huge, more family crypt than urn. All four of us siblings could fit in there. It is, no joke, half the size of me. Not only that, its sheer scale makes it an eyesore. It’s too grand, too gaudy. It would be the first object your eye would settle on the second you walked into any room.

In the end, I visit the bricks and mortar homewares shop with the massive mausoleum in tow to try and swap it. They don’t offer exchanges or refunds, but I manage to convince them that it’s simply the wrong size for the space I had in mind, which isn’t too far from the truth. I can’t bring myself to tell them it’s actually an urn for my brother’s ashes and the lovely saleswoman keeps trying to sell me matching lamps to go with the new ginger jar I’ve picked out.

I politely pass on the lamps but take home a much smaller and sweeter home for my big brother. For a moment, I think to call him to tell him about the brouhaha. I know he would have found it hysterical.

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