Woman Smokes Her Deceased Father’s Ashes, ‘He Would Get A Huge Kick Out Of This’
When celebrating the life of someone we love who passed, we want to do so in a way they would have liked. Maybe they even have specific requests, things they want their friends and families to do once they die to properly honor those memories.
Some of those requests can get pretty strange, though, as one popular YouTube star now knows after fulfilling her father's dying wish.
To emerge from our darkness, we have to learn to work with our darkness. It's something to be embraced, not shunned.
The Shadow Work Journal gives you everything you need to learn about your shadow self and how to heal alongside them, get started today and let healing in.
To sign up for the Higher Perspectives weekly newsletter and get more articles delivered right to your inbox, click here.
Shocking An Audience
Rosanna Pansino is a YouTube creator with over 14.6 million subscribers as of this writing. Much of her content centers on food, viral media, or, more recently, other creators. Lately, she's been caught up in drama with other major internet influencers, Mr. Beast and Logan Paul, but they have nothing to do with her latest controversy.
Pansino announced that she would be starting a podcast, named Rodiculous, and debuted it with the first episode titled Smoking My Dead Dad.
What It Says
That title is no joke, either. That's exactly what she does.
Pansino lost her father five years ago after his battle with Leukemia. He had been a guest on her YouTube channel many times, where she would lovingly call him Papa Pizza, meaning her audience knew him as well. His death was felt by thousands of people all over the world who not only loved Pansino, but loved the bond she shared with her father.
While what she does in her podcasting debut seems extremely strange, it didn't come out of nowhere, either. In fact, it's what her father wanted her to do, for his dying wish was "to be grown into a cannabis plant and be smoked."
Eventual Acceptance
"Before he passed, he told me and my mom what he would like us to do with his ashes and at first, my mom was a little bit hesitant," Pansino explained in the episode. "She thought, this is kind of hippie, people are gonna judge us. But as time's gone on, we just really think that it's the right time to do what dad wanted and to honor him the way he wanted."
Now, as she also clarified for any concerned viewer, it's very dangerous to smoke ash directly. Instead, they mixed his ashes in soil and used that to grow, then smoke, a marijuana plant.
After So Many Years
Footage of the entire process was shared in the YouTube version of the podcast episode, which is on Pansino's main channel. She actually begins smoking the joint, rolled with delicate pink paper, in the middle of the episode. She does it on camera, but her mother and sister join her by smoking off-camera.
She then opened up about her experiences with grief since her father's passing, saying it felt like a part of herself died with him. She said it was "interesting how grief can hit you when you are not planning for it, and you don't want it to."
In His Shape
"Losing dad just because he was one of my best friends, it was just different," she continued. "And I thought over time, the sadness would fade, but grief is always with me, it feels like it is permanently attached to me."
"I think I'm just like my dad. He was a social butterfly, I think that definitely rubbed off on me. He also taught me to respect life and not be wasteful. Don't take s*** from anyone. And just because you're small doesn't mean you can't make a difference. My dad was a bada** and quite a little rebel, and I will be following in his footsteps."
Smiling Over Them
Though unusual, she also says that the whole process of growing the plant with his ashes and smoking like he asked her to wound up being a very special experience for her. "It was very emotional and special, and I'm glad that we got to have these memories, like, honoring dad together. If Papa Pizza could see this, you guys, he would just he would get a huge kick out of this."
No one grieves the same way, and some may even do so in ways you'd never expect, but so long as it lets someone heal and grow, there's never, ever a wrong way to grieve.
