Grieving mother asks for son’s ashes to be scattered around world after suicide
A heartbroken mother is overwhelmed by the strangers spreading her dead son’s ashes across the globe.
Hallie Twomey of Maine says she will never awake from the nightmare of her son CJ’s suicide four years ago. But the nearly 10,000 people who are helping her son see the world make her feel a little less alone.
“I will never forget that our son took his life. I cry every night,” Twomey said in an interview with Yahoo News. “Just seeing that people are willing to lend a helping hand to let us know our son is not forgotten, it’s the most bittersweet experience of my life.”
CJ’s ashes had been sitting in an urn in their home ever since April 2010, when he committed suicide in front of his mother at the age of 20.
The young man, a former member of the U.S. Air Force, had a lust for life and loved to travel, but his life ended far too soon.
And it pained Twomey to think that her boy — who yearned for adventure — would not get a chance to see the rest of the world.
“CJ’s urn can’t be it. It’s such a finite place,” she said. “This can’t be all there is. He didn’t get to do all the things he should have done.”
That’s when Twomey decided to send out a request on her personal Facebook page. She asked people to spread his ashes, so he could go to places he never got to see in life.
At first, she thought a few friends would simply bring a small portion of his ashes with them on vacation. But people went out of their way to help.
Soon afterward, she started the Facebook group Scattering CJ, and it took on a life of its own.
Since November 2013, nearly 10,000 people have volunteered and scattered the ashes in many countries, including Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Norway, Mongolia, Haiti, Canada, Brazil and New Zealand.
Twomey mails ash in little baggies, accompanied by a picture of CJ wearing a Boston Red Sox T-shirt with a pair of sunglasses resting on his head.
The participants typically take pictures of themselves in the act with that photo in view.
When asked what the volunteers get from the experience, Twomey said, “I really don’t know. We offer them absolutely nothing in return. I like to think that I’m a good person and I would do the same for someone else.”
The story went viral after CNN picked it up in December 2013. This came with compassionate messages, as well as snarky comments from Internet trolls.
Twomey said she could deal with the mean-spirited attacks against her — but not against her boy.
”The ones where they attack CJ are hard. My husband sort of told me to stop reading those and to focus on the good,” she said.
She soon discovered that many of the people who have helped give her son one last trip around the world have been deeply affected by suicide. They either contemplated committing it themselves or lost a loved one to it.
“We’ve gotten emails from hundreds of people who were going to end their lives who have seen what our family is going through and decided not to do that,” she said.
Twomey is grateful that Scattering CJ may have saved others' lives and is humbled by the kindness of complete strangers.
But — more than anything else — she wishes she could turn back the clock and see her son once again.
“He was awesome. I know every parent would tell you that,” she said. “His smile entered a room before he did. I want people to remember who he was. I had such a finite amount of time with CJ.”
Then she paused before saying, “Twenty years is just too short.”
