An evening of grief once turned into my most liberating New Year’s Eve

‘I had it all figured out. Until I didn’t.’ Photograph: mediaphotos/Getty Images/iStockphoto

I 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.