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'She always wanted to travel and now she is.'
In a unique memorial to his late mother, Vera Anderson, Ross Anderson has sent her ashes around the world. It was her dying wish to travel, something she couldn't do during life because of emphysema and heart problems. Ross Anderson says recipients of the ashes have treated them with love and respect. Mom's ashes go worldwide By MARK FREEMAN Too sick and frail for most of her 78 years, Vera Anderson could travel very little in life. But she is hitting all the corners of the world in death, one little Baggie of ashes at a time, as part of an unusual memorial organized by her son. Ross Anderson, of Medford, is fulfilling his mother's dying wish of touring the world by sending her ashes to more than 250 cities worldwide, including all 50 states and 191 countries. And total strangers have taken this farewell tour to heart, organizing lavish burial ceremonies or simple little send-offs in far-off corners of the globe. Vera Anderson's ashes have dimpled Lake Titicaca in The Andes, the highest lake in the world, and graced the stream in front of the Royal Castle of Stockholm, Sweden. She has toured Thailand, joined the Mediterranean flotsam around Malta, and dusted the snows of both the Earth's poles. "There are so many people in so many places who have put her ashes places that she'd love," says Ross Anderson, a 53-year-old retired manufacturer and author. "She always wanted to travel," he says, "and now she is." As word of the travels of Anderson's ashes grows, the memorial is getting quite a bit of media attention in Europe and Asia. Ash stories have cropped up in The Times of London and Pravda in Russia, while Ross Anderson even has been interviewed by the BBC. "I never thought it would turn into something like this at all," Ross Anderson says. "I figured other people would have thought of doing something like this before." Ross and Vera Anderson talked of touring the world many times, but the mother's emphysema and heart troubles kept her chained to an oxygen tube since her 30s. "We'd arrange trips for her, get tickets and all kinds of things for her," the son says. "Then it would be time to go, and she just couldn't do it." She lived most of her life in Idaho Falls, Idaho, before living for six years in Medford during the late 1980s and early '90s. She finished her days in Denver with one of Anderson's brothers. When she died Jan. 6 in Denver, family members had her body cremated after first loading her casket with letters of tribute, her favorite Teddy bear, pictures of her old pets and a $1 Oregon Lottery scratch-off ticket - "for good luck on the trip," Ross Anderson says. Half the ashes went to family members for a ceremony, while Ross Anderson took the rest. He packaged them in sealed baggies, added a note asking its reader to find a nice place for the ashes and sent them to the head postmaster in the main post offices of the capitals of all 50 states as well as capitals of every country. Soon after, people began sending back pictures and letters detailing what they had done with the ashes. The Aymara Indians held a burial ceremony for her at Lake Titicaca; a nun at a South American orphanage now considers Vera Anderson her guardian angel. The ashes were sprinkled along the Choo Praya River in Thailand, on the Alabama state capitol grounds in Montgomery and within sight of Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. "We have fulfilled your wish as for last will of your mother and grandmother," wrote Vasyl G. Mukhin, the director general of the Ukrainian State Enterprise of Posts. "Accept our condolences concerning your bereavement." Anderson says his mother's ashes have been treated with nothing but respect and love by the strangers who received them, and he has asked his seven kids to do the same for him one day. "It is," he says, "really quite a nice send-off." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com |
