By Emma Clayton

The biggest moments we face in life are often the most surreal.

With the death of a loved one comes a series of odd rituals that nothing prepares you for. I felt strangely numb collecting my dad's remains from the funeral director and driving home with the urn on the passenger seat, past the pub where he played dominoes every Thursday. It only started to feel unbearably sad when I arrived at his empty house, and would have done anything to be chuckling at something daft on the telly with my dad instead of staring at a plastic urn wondering what to do with it.

For six months the ashes of our parents have been in the sideboard, but last week the time to release them finally arrived.

Since they died within a few months of each other, we decided that their 50th wedding anniversary would be a fitting occasion. So it was that, instead of throwing a Golden Wedding party with bunting and a cake and happy speeches, my brother, sister and I took our mum and dad to a place in the Dales where we used to go as a family.

We spent many Sunday afternoons there enjoying picnics, games of cricket, and swimming in the biting cold river. I thought of those times as we made our way along the riverside path, trying to blend in with other walkers and day-trippers.

The thing about scattering ashes is trying to be discreet. “We could put them in rucksacks,” suggested my brother, as we considered ways of disguising the urns. I thought of a friend of mine who put her mother’s ashes in a Marks and Spencer’s bag “because she’d have wanted nothing less” before scattering them off the end of a pier.

In the end we put the urns into a picnic box and no-one looked twice as we carried it to the river, but there were several people about and trying to find a quiet spot looked tricky. Then we saw a little hill, secluded from the pathway but overlooking the river, and that was where we left them, with a bunch of sunflowers.

The sun was shining when we finally released them, just as it was on their wedding day half a century ago.

It was emotional but there came a sense of relief that we'd finally laid them to rest. It seemed such a surreal thing to do, but I reckon it's best to maintain a sense of humour with such abstract moments in life. So we walked to a nearby pub, ate fish and chips, raised a glass and had a bit of a laugh. My parents were fun people - we weren't going to spend their special anniversary with long faces.

After that came the question of what to do with the urns. Chucking them into the recycling bin would feel disrespectful, and we thought about planting flowers in them but, frankly, they're not very pretty. "How about returning them to the funeral director?" I suggested. I have no idea if they'd use them again, like milk bottles, but it seemed a sensible option.

As a friend mused recently, urns are simply "vessels for souls", which sounds like fridge magnet philosophy, but I quite like it.