> I had opened the box containing my father’s ashes and portioned out perhaps a pint of the coarse, bone-white powder.
'bone-white powder'
I wonder what the incinerator people actually gave him?
What do you object to, the color or the texture?
Note that 'bone white' pigment used to be made by burning bones.
Whenever I've seen people's ashes they were grey and a bit chunky even after being ground.
Anecdotes are awesome. But the color of the output depends on the input (kinda for everything I guess?); Temperature, amount of bone, etc.
My understanding is that this is a choice made by funeral homes to provide something “identifiable” to families. They run the furnaces at a lower temperature so that combustion is incomplete. Otherwise you are left with nothing but powdery ash, and people complaining that they can’t tell if the powder really is their loved one’s or not.