Jessica Waite stunned readers when she confessed last year to doing the unthinkable.
She had furiously stirred dog feces into a portion of her cheating husband’s ashes and thrown the sordid mixture into the trash – then, in a moment of guilt and despair, took out more of his remains and ate them.
Her memoir chronicled the discovery after Sean’s sudden heart attack that he had led a double life, compulsively watching pornography, hiring escorts, and racking up affairs during what she had thought was their idyllic 17-year marriage.
But the act of ‘desecrating the remains of my partner in life’ followed by the regretful ingestion, Waite admitted, came at the bottom of a downward psychological spiral that left her unmoored by grief and rage.
‘The remains feel dry against my fingertips, coarser than baking powder, grainier than salt,’ she says, in one of the strangest set of tasting notes you’re ever likely to read.
‘They mix with the teary water, a mineral mud on the back of my tongue. I swallow.’
The revelation sparked widespread fascination — and fierce debate — when first reported in October. Now, as The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards is released in paperback, it appears that Waite’s actions are far from unique.
A growing number of bereaved people are breaking their silence around the deeply taboo grief ritual of consuming a loved one’s cremated remains, or ‘cremains’. Whether accidental, symbolic or compulsive, stories have emerged across the internet and beyond.
Jessica Waite’s idyllic life came crashing down when Sean, her husband of 17 years, died suddenly from a heart attack
In despair and guilt, she took some of his ashes – and ate them
A woman called Casie, from Fayetteville, Tennessee, appeared on the show My Strange Addiction to confess that what had begun as an innocent enough habit had taken a turn for the more macabre.
Casie had been so distraught at her husband Shawn’s sudden death that she had taken to carrying his ashes everywhere she went – even sleeping with them.
But one day, while transferring his cremains, some ended up on her fingers.
‘I didn’t want to wipe him off – that’s my husband, I didn’t want to wipe him away,’ she tells the show. ‘So I just licked it off my fingers.’
Two months later, she was addicted.
‘I’m eating my husband,’ she says. ‘First I lick my finger. And I don’t just dip it in. I swirl it around to kind of feel and get it caked on good. Then I just eat it.’
She describes the taste as ‘like rotten eggs, sand, and sandpaper’ but says she’s grown to love it, because it helps her feel closer to Shawn.
She adds: ‘I’ve lost 42 pounds since my husband passed away. Basically the only thing I’m eating are his ashes.’
Casie had been so distraught at her husband Shawn’s sudden death that she had taken to carrying the urn with his ashes everywhere she went
One day, while transferring his cremains, some ended up on her fingers. ‘I didn’t want to wipe him off… so I just licked it off my fingers
That sense of connection to a lost loved one is reflected in the 12-hour marathon performance by artist Eva Margarita who, in 2020, cooked and ate a meal containing the bones and ashes of her late father.
‘I cooked three dishes, wherein I picked just the bone pieces, the residual transcripts of his frame, to honor his relationship with his three children,’ she says.
‘His pounded down, powdered ashes mixed into the fritas, the rice and beans, and it was all up in the sauce that went on top of the tamales.
‘Each dish represents my father, but also another way of reinventing the body and renewing the grief by consuming it.’
While these cases are certainly at the more unconventional end of the trend, an increasing number of bereaved loved ones are opening up about what is still very much a taboo subject.
In her Ted Talk, podcaster Nora McInerny, who has written widely about her personal experience in dealing with grief and loss, also confesses to licking the ashes of her husband off her fingers.
After Aaron died from an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2014, Nora was scattering his cremains in his favorite river in Minnesota.
‘When the bag was empty, there were still ashes stuck to my fingers,’ she says.
‘And I could have just put my hands in the water and rinsed them but instead I licked my hands clean because I was so afraid of losing more than I’d already lost. And I was so desperate to make sure that he would always be a part of me.’
Nora McInerny’s husband Aaron died from an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2014
Nora has written widely about her personal experience dealing with grief and loss
In a recent Reddit thread for widowers, a contributor called PhaseDelicious912 asks if anyone else has licked ashes off their fingers, adding: ‘Hoping I’m not the only one.’
In response, bawareness says: ‘Yes lol because I didn’t want to just wash it off.’
‘I’ve eaten bits of my father, grandmother and my beloved dog,’ admits Jfurever.
And king_eve writes: ‘Thanks for talking about this. It’s something I’ve struggled to put into words to anyone else.’
Overcome with grief and loneliness, Big_Scar1130 admits to having done similar, most recently at a friend’s backyard party.
‘I carry a little urn of his ashes to bring to for events, family/friend gatherings. I stepped outside and cried on the curb feeling so f***ed up from the emotions of his death. And having to be here without him. I pulled out his urn and sprinkled some of his ashes into my drink, I just wanted to feel close to him again.
‘Grief is f***ing crazy,’ the user adds. ‘You’d do anything to feel a part of them again.’
‘I do it on anniversaries,’ says nmh881, reasoning: ‘I don’t think it’s strange. Many cultures practice endocannibalism.’
Natasha Emeny caught her one-year-old son Koah eating her grandfather’s ashes
The cremains were smeared all over the toddler’s face, clothes and the sofa
But while deliberately ingesting a loved one’s ashes is much more common than most of us imagine, it can also happen as a cruel prank – as in the case of the unsuspecting brother who was fed his grandmother’s ashes in spaghetti sauce cooked by his sister.
Or the student in California who baked her grandfather’s ashes into sugar cookies and gave them out at her high school in 2018, to the outrage of parents.
In another incident, a mother was left ‘mortified’ earlier this year after she walked into her living room only to find her toddler eating her father’s cremains.
Natasha Emeny caught her one-year-old son Koah innocently strolling around having smeared ash over his face, clothes and the sofa.
She said the urn had been placed on the top shelf to keep it out of reach of hungry toddlers.
Although Koah had never before reached for the urn, he had somehow managed to get to it when she wasn’t looking.
Dr Stuart Fischer, an internal medicine doctor in New York City, told the Daily Mail that, while the practice might raise health concerns, ‘nothing either good or bad could happen’ from eating a small amount of human remains – ‘except, perhaps, for a nasty stomach ache’.
Other side effects could include bloating and diarrhea but, he adds, ashes are not toxic, so would be unlikely to cause anything more serious.
