Cremation and Bohemian Rhapsody

I think my dad enjoyed cremating his mother.

That sounds brutal, but I don’t say it lightly. He absolutely hated that woman. The way she treated him in childhood—constant criticism, no love, no warmth—left him isolated. Alone in a house that should’ve been safe. And when his father died young, I think part of my dad believed his mother had a hand in that too. Whether by stress or neglect or sheer coldness, I don’t know. But my dad loved his dad deeply. And he never forgave her.

When she finally died, he put her in a cardboard box to be cremated.

I used to think that was just a weird, cheap decision. But now I wonder if it wasn’t something more symbolic. A final act of containment. Of control. Of closure. He didn’t even come inside her house when we visited. He stayed outside. I don’t remember him ever speaking to her. Not once. That silence was his boundary.

She made me uncomfortable too. Her presence felt wrong—like a hunger for something she could never get back. She told us once that the sons of people down the street were better than my dad. She even called the police on him when he took her car to get fixed. Said he stole it. He got arrested.

And yet… I didn’t go to her funeral.

My sister went. My mum went. But I didn’t. I still don’t know where I was. It’s like I was kept away. And maybe that was intentional. Maybe my dad was showing me something. That when the time comes, you don’t have to perform grief. You can be respectful on the surface while protecting your truth on the inside.

He showed dignity, but I think privately, he celebrated.

And maybe that’s what I needed to see. That it’s okay to walk away from the people who harmed you, even in death. Maybe that was his quiet gift to me.

He used to say Bohemian Rhapsody was her favorite song. And he’d laugh when he said it. That song always struck me as being about guilt, estrangement, and the ghost of a family system that failed you. Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe he was too. But it fits. It all fits too well.

The thing is, my mum wasn’t perfect. She didn’t love me the way I needed. But my dad’s mum… she was something else entirely. A level deeper in the dark.

And yet somehow, through all of that, he tried to show me how to carry it without letting it destroy me.

I think that’s the part I’m just now beginning to understand.