I’d planned the perfect one-woman sober New Year’s non-party. The night turned into something odder and more catharticI scattered my parents’ ashes in the backyard of my childhood home on New Year’s Eve 10 years ago, drunk on grief and prosecco, and buzzed on a borrowed joint and stale fruitcake.This wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to memorialize my parents. The evening had started innocently enough. A few hours earlier, I had been sipping tea and spooning my cat under a waning moon, with a new Ikea comforter and a fresh bag of Swedish fish. I had resigned myself to an evening devoid of social expectations and alcohol, of endlessly searching for the perfect plan and of the disappointment of never finding it.Shanti L Nelson is a writer and photographer Continue reading...