Diamonds and Dust

Do I look fat?

I've been waiting for the right time to publish this post. It's a bit dark, but the world has gotten dark and half the country is buried in snow, the other half is buried in ICE. So........ here it is.

I’ve decided that I want to be cremated. Not today. The preferred option is after I am dead - very dead. That’s settled. But what to do with the ashes? See my conundrum? I'm trying to think ahead and be responsible.

My friend Irene is having herself made into diamonds that her daughters can wear. It gives new meaning to the feeling that your mother is hanging around your neck for eternity. Another friend, Debra, has decided that she wants to be divided up into small pouches and distributed among friends. I want Debra’s thigh, maybe a wing.

There are so many possibilities. I certainly do not want to be stuffed into Xmas ornaments which is suggested by an enterprising seller on Etsy (I'll bet she would do a special Chanukah order). I could be baked into a blintz, but there are better solutions. I remember when my daughter and her friend Sara snuck into Sara’s grandmother’s favorite golf club to sprinkle her ashes on the back nine. And there is always the ubiquitous story of the family trudging up a mountain in Colorado (or taking a boat ride) to send uncle so and so or grandma off their favorite cliff or into their favorite lake only to be met by a surprise wind …hmmm, it is definitely an ‘in your face’ problem.

I applaud these creative responses to being dead. They just aren’t me. Like many of my generation, I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time worrying about being an authentic version of me while I’m alive. I’d hate to fail at the final, big moment.

I’m afraid of water and heights so mountains and lakes are out as final resting places. Someday, I’ll write about my experience learning golf and you will understand why sprinkling me on a manicured putting green would be a travesty. Also, I don’t want to be in the back of a closet or on a shelf, haunting my children. Don’t get me wrong – I fully intend to haunt my children, but not from some stupid heart shaped urn that a cat will knock over.

I do have one thought.

I think I want to be sprinkled over a protest march, preferably a pro-choice rally since that feels like home (and we will probably be fighting that battle for years to come, so I can live a long life and still end up at a similar rally to the Big One in DC in March,1986). I haven’t figured out all the minutiae: Would I be put into a leaf blower? Or would my kids throw handfuls of me in the air while singing ‘This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land’.  It has appeal. So many protests, so few ashes.

As the realtors say "Location, location, location………"

On another note; with this post, we pass the 100 mark of scintillating blog posts. "Yet, she persists." Give your Valentine a copy of Not The Trip We Planned and enjoy.