"I'm holding my husband in a jar"!

Reel-time can mimick real-time

They say art imitates life and life imitates art and the longer I live the more I find it is true. Last week on the ABC soap General Hospital the character Tracy Quartermaine (Jane Alexander) said something that stunned me then had me in stitches and at the same time was very sobering. Tracy was aboard the ship The Haunted Star when she ran into Alexis Davis (Nancy Lee Grahn). While holding a blue urn with the ashes of her deceased husband Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) she says in her usual facetious manner, “I'm holding Luke is a jar. Everything is peachy-keen in my life!”

This sarcastic remark was par for the course for this character and fans would not expect anything less. I laughed to tears and said out Loud "Oh I so get that it's true." I( actually had made a similar statement after my husband of 40 years passed away in March 2021. Now I was looking at a television character expressing the same sentiment and holding an urn that was identical to the one my husband's ashes are in.

I have begun to realize in my later years that not everything on the small screen is made up from the head of the writers. Yes, soap operas can have some far-fetched tales but every now and then they can hit home with viewers who have gone through an identical situation. In December of 2021, a number of viewers shared that they could relate to Brando Corbin (Johnny Wacktor) and Sasha Gilmore (Sophia Mattison) whose newborn baby did not live long.

Facing facts

Never in my wildest dreams could I at age 12 watching the "stories" with my great-grandmother ever imagine that five decades later I would be relating to such a distressing storyline but here I am. Luke Spencer was larger than life and a popular character on General Hospital. Some fans are hoping this is a ruse and that he might turn up alive and well somewhere out there. Geary has said in multiple interviews that whenever he left the soap he wanted his character to die. It looks like 5 years after the actor departed GH the writers have given him his wish but no one knows for certain.

At any rate for me, seeing that blue urn and hearing Tracy's words hit me like a ton of bricks because one day I had said to my oldest son that his dad was a living breathing human being and now is reduced to 2 or 3 pounds of bone fragments inside a container. In case you did not know, crushed bones are what the family is given and it's not actually ashes. The reality of my husband's life and death came crashing back into my mind and I alternated between laughing and crying for a few moments.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust

I know the spirit of my spouse is not inside the urn but it contains the physical part of him that I knew for 45 years and still love. To hear a soap actress voice what I had been feeling and having an identical conversation and urn is sticking with me. I'm certain that out of the millions of fans who watch General Hospital each week I am not the only person whose loved one's remains are inside a blue container but it felt so personal.

Tracy threw Luke's ashes over the side of the ship and they blew into the face of Scott Baldwin (Kin Shriner) who was sitting nearby on the dock which made things a bit hilarious. Luke and Scott did not get along so this was quite fitting.

When a dearly departed loved one is buried in a cemetery no one has to have the conversation that Jane Alexander's character and I had. Most people do not think about what is happening underneath the ground when they visit the gravesite and are not visualizing their loved ones as a skeleton. You cannot, however, unsee the gray/white fragments of a life that are inside that square white box prior to placing them in an urn or just spreading them somewhere. Thank you for reading my story and if you liked it please leave and heart, and tips are always appreciated.