In August, after an eight-month battle with cancer, Jeremy passed away. He and his wife, Rosi Golan, had flown to his native Australia for his final weeks. He loved his home and his people too much to be anywhere else in the end.
There is no handbook for how to be a person after losing your person. Yet somehow, Golan stayed afloat. She planned his celebration of life, spent time with his family, wrote his eulogy, canceled his credit cards. Just a regular to-do list. But inside, she was drowning.
The Phase of 'Grief Drunk'
Golan calls this phase “grief drunk.” You are handed the keys to a car and told to drive, even though you are completely out of your mind. She was not in her body. She was hovering above it, watching herself do impossible things.
Jeremy chose to be cremated. A few weeks before he died, they had one of many brutal but beautiful hospital conversations. He gave her a list of places he wanted his ashes spread. One of them was Sydney Harbour. So she planned to do that before flying home. Jess, one of his best friends, drove her to the crematorium. She could not have done it alone.
Picking Up the Ashes
When they arrived, they walked into an empty office. On the counter was a bag with a sticky note that said her name. Inside was a heavy cardboard cylinder with a certificate rubber-banded around it. Forty-four years of a beautiful life, reduced to a paper bag on a sunny afternoon. It felt like picking up takeout. No one even checked her ID.
Back at Jess’s house, Golan realized she needed to pour some of his ashes into something smaller to take to the Harbour. She asked for a jar or glass bottle. Jess pulled out Tupperware. Golan gave her a horrified look. Then a jam jar. No. Absolutely not. Nothing felt right.
Finally, Jess found a small glass bottle with a long neck. It felt less wrong. They fashioned a newspaper funnel. Golan lifted the cardboard tube and began to pour her husband into a bottle, between her kids’ art on the fridge and the barking dog. She cracked a dark joke — something like, “It looks like cat litter.” They both laughed at the absurdity of it all. Then she went to the bathroom to cry for the millionth time that week.
Anger and Spreading Ashes
Only five months earlier, he had been blowing out birthday candles on that same counter. Golan was suddenly so angry. She respected his choices, but she does not think he realized what it would mean for her to carry him, to divide him, to pour him into bottles, to live through these moments repeatedly.
Later that day, they took the bottle to the Harbour with a few of his closest friends and family. They took turns letting some of him go, watching the water take him in. It was surreal and heartbreaking. They all toasted to him, sitting on the grass with the finest view Sydney has to offer. Jeremy loved this view.
Returning to the U.S. with Precious Cargo
Eventually, it was time to return to the U.S. Golan had come with Jeremy, and she was leaving with him too, only this time, he was in her carry-on. She was headed to the airport, already a nervous flyer. Now she was also responsible for the most precious, painful cargo.
At the airport, she whispered mantras to herself: Please don’t talk to me. Please don’t ask me questions. Just let me get on the plane. But of course, her bag was flagged.
The TSA agent opened it. She stopped him. “It’s ashes,” she said, holding out the paperwork required to bring the cremated remains onto the flight. He nodded but still took them for additional screening. She waited anxiously. She kept it together.
He spent some time chatting with other officers, then ran the ashes through the X-ray machine no less than three times before he returned. He handed them back to her and asked, “So… what happened?” She stared at him. How could he not see the shell of a person standing in front of him? He asked this with the same ease as asking, “So, how was your day?” She does not remember what she said. She probably just dryly responded: “My husband died.” What else is there?
The Flight Attendant's Joke
Making her way through the rest of the airport, she still kept it together. She hid behind her mask and hooded sweatshirt, tightly holding herself together as she waited to board. Finally, it was time.
She had booked a business class seat so she could fall apart in her own private bubble. As she boarded, she realized she might not have the strength to lift her bag overhead. She tried anyway. She could not. A flight attendant noticed and came over. “Let me help you,” she said. “It’s heavy,” Golan warned. They lifted it together. And that is when it happened.
“Whoa,” the flight attendant said, laughing. “What do you have in here, bricks?” It was probably a small, seemingly insignificant joke she had made hundreds of times. The air left the plane. Golan saw black. She felt like she was falling untethered through space. Her laugh an echo, somewhere in the distance.
As she made her way back to the present moment, ringing in her ears, she finally crumpled. Her face twisted. The tears came fast and hot. She could not stop them. “It’s… my husband,” she whispered through gasped attempts at breathing into her suffocating mask. Her face turned ghost white. She gently closed the compartment, brought Golan tissues and water, and knelt beside her. “I’m so sorry. If you need anything, and I mean anything, we’re here.” Golan nodded, hiding behind the Kleenex. She was embarrassed for her, for herself. Most of all, she wanted to tell Jeremy what happened. But he was in the overhead bin.
Reflections on Grief
The rest of the flight, the crew was incredibly kind. They watched her quietly, from a distance. She slept. She watched films. She cried. She took her carry-on and got off the plane, and rolled her husband through LAX as she made her way to her friend who was waiting to pick her up to start the next part of her life.
It has been eight months since that flight. Golan does not feel any closer to figuring out what life looks like now, but she does feel more comfortable talking about it. Grief does not follow a timeline, which she is oddly grateful for. She has not spread any more of Jeremy’s ashes yet, but she plans to this summer in Italy. For now, he sits on the dresser in their bedroom. She has not decided if that is where he will stay. But part of her needs him close. At least for now.
She thinks about that flight attendant sometimes. She wonders if she remembers the moment. If it keeps her up at night. If she ever tells the story of the worst joke she ever made. If she does, she hopes she knows it was not her fault.
Golan has learned that grief is like static, buzzing through the most mundane moments. No one warned her about the absurd and ordinary moments that make up real grieving — that there would be no ceremony in picking up ashes, or the surreal choreography of TSA screenings, or how a stranger’s joke would collapse her mid-aisle. She wrote this hoping that if we talked about these things more, really talked about them, maybe fewer people would feel so alone in the wreckage. Maybe we would all be a little gentler. A little more careful with our words. A little more ready for what loss actually looks like. After all, we all came here on a round-trip ticket.
