A Summary by Dan Law
"Ashes" by David Sedaris is memoir that tells how he and his family react to his mother's cancer. It is structured around the events of his sister's wedding using flashbacks and humor to explain the various responses, especially his own. Both the cancer and the wedding are viewed as very negative from his perspective. Through out the essay his father’s views and personality are contrasted to that of his mother’s and his own.
Sedaris begins his memoir by telling how he had made all of his siblings sign a contract never to marry after realizing that he was a homosexual. His reason for this prohibition is his fear that his sisters would end up neglecting the family to spend time with their husbands. This is immediately contrasted with his father’s wishes that they all get married and have children. A brief story of his mother’s usual way of responding to pictures of their neighbor’s grandchildren reveals her own negative view of marriage and procreation.
David then tells of his sister Lisa’s engagement to her boyfriend and gives a humorous description of her un-ambitious, overly tidy, but likable fiancé Bob. After mentioning Bob’s likableness, David makes it clear that it only the “the marrying part” that he disliked.
The wedding is then used as a reference point for his mother’s cancer. He quotes his mother to let the reader know that she has lung cancer and that it is a result of years of smoking and un-healthy drinking habits. He tells how he and his other siblings react by trying to tell themselves that she will get better and by coming up with hobbies that she could take when she has beaten the cancer. He also notes that his mother had given up on beating the cancer even before she had heard the doctor’s plan to attempt a recovery.
He then tells how his mother would have preferred that they did not know about the cancer because it would change the way that they treated her and that it was only because of their father’s insistence that she did tell. This is followed by a description of how all of the children changed the way that they talked to her knowing that it could be their last conversation.
The next section describes Lisa’s wedding day. First, he focuses on his thoughts of how even her marriage would be unable to keep her away from the family. They he describes the uncomfortable time spent at the reception. The reason’s his discomfort being the absence of alcohol and his inability to relate normally with his mother because of the cancer.
He then describes the events following the reception beginning with their arrival at their hotel, followed by a meal with his brother and his parents and ending with a hike to a cemetery with his four unmarried siblings where they smoked marijuana and imagined what life would be like without their mother.
Through out these events he contrasts the opposing personalities of his mother and father and identifies his own feelings more closely to his mother’s. In this final section he reveals that his mother had always wanted to be cremated. He ends with the irony of his mother smoking a cigarette and looking at its ashes and envisioning her own end.