A Canadian widow ate her late husband’s cremated remains after discovering his double life filled with affairs and high-end escorts. Mom and essayist Jessica Waite opens up about eating her spouse’s ashes while processing the loss and lies of husband Sean, who died in 2015 on a business trip in Texas, in her new memoir.
A Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards describes how Waite became “detached from reality,” unable to cope with her husband of 17 years’ secret life and affairs. Angry at her spouse’s betrayal, she first mixes Sean’s ashes into dog feces, writing “I’ve desecrated the remains of my partner in life.”
“But then, in despair and guilt, took more of his ashes — and actually ate them,” she admits. “The remains feel dry against my fingertips, coarser than baking powder, grainier than salt. They mix with the teary water, a mineral mud on the back of my tongue. I swallow.”
