I Am Really Confused Why My Professor Left Me His Ashes

Article by: Ariana | Photo by: Lizzy

Dear Dean,

I am sorry to write you like this, but I have a strange situation to bring to your attention. I have received a package marked “Professor Mosby, College of Union Meetings CM 482”. I opened the package out of curiosity and it was a rather large urn painted gold with silver markings. I believe it had ruby and emerald in the center. I have no cremated family members, so I did not understand this was an urn. I opened it. It smelled disgusting.. is what I want to say, but it smelled of blueberry pie. Did someone put scents into his ashes??? Did it smell like that naturally??

I do not enjoy having ashes in my possession, especially for a professor I only had for one semester who I had one on one conversations with under ten times. Our conversations were never even personal. Except for one time.

Professor Mosby had just given a lecture on the rise and fall of man post Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech. I was walking out of the lecture hall and he stopped me and pointed at my shirt. There was a slightly blue stain on the cuff of my sleeve. He begged the question of, “why?” I said that I was not sure. “really replay you wearing this shirt in your memory.” He insisted. I said “ummm.. I don’t know.. I got soap on it!?” He said “alright sure. I will revisit you on this. You will see you are wrong.” 

Dean, as I write to you I realize what was on my cuff that day. I didn’t think I would ever figure it out. It just clicked. It wasn’t an issue of when the blue had gotten on me that day.. because it didn’t get on me that day, I got it on me the last time I wore this shirt. And the last time I wore this shirt was when I was baking Blueberry pies with my grandmother.

I am in utter disbelief. I never thought I would see the day that I would realize what had stained my shirt blue. Only because this man sent me his Blueberry Pie scented ashes did it take me to open my eyes.

Receiving my professor’s ashes is secretly a blessing in disguise. This means that he knew more about me than I did. Ugh idk what else to say should I bring it back to the ashes. (ashes we all fall down)

• Smoke the ashes

• Wonky bit

Here are some different endings:

In real time I watch his ashes float through the air slowly assembling his person once more.

And as I regained memory of the last time I kissed my late husband, I realized that the lord was in me all along.

In the end, the clown fish I was looking for was the one inside my heart.
For all stories end with something that makes the emotional investment worth it, this one does not.

But it was all a dream!!?? Gotcha! I’ll catch you on the gobbledeegoo!