discovered it’s easier to drop bombs in the car when she’s looking straight ahead.
“You got my letter?” she says, tooling down Palmetto.
“If this is about the plots again, Ma, I don’t want the plots. I’ve decided. I’m getting cremated.”
“What?”
I remind her that the last time Dad took me to see his father’s grave in Brooklyn, Jacob Volk’s stone was listing. The plot was overgrown. Black swastikas were sprayed all over the place, and every piece of glass that protected the photographs on the head-stones was smashed. Has she forgotten how Dad’s sisters refused to chip in for the upkeep? “I’m going to be cremated, Ma. No one’s going to feel guilty because they haven’t visited my grave. No one’s going to vandalize it. No one’s going to fight over the maintenance charges.”
“Still,” she says, “the thought of it. . . .”
I tell her about my friend Madeline who keeps her mother and father in matching urns in the basement. She waves to them every time she does the wash.
My mother cracks up. What I really want to say is,
You can’t die
until I can’t make you smile.
Studying the slim, chestnut-haired twenty-year-old in the photo Mom has always kept on her dresser, I ask if Dad still looks like that to her.
“He seems just like the day I met him,” she says.
Sitting on his patio, overlooking a lake, my father says, “This isn’t a bad last view, is it? This isn’t a bad way to go.”
“Where ya going?” I say.
Knock wood, ward off the evil eye, I can’t picture anything happening to them. They both love their work. They both play killer tennis. They’ve both had run-ins with scary things, but what does that mean? Most people I know would be dead if it weren’t for modern medicine.
“We’re not afraid to die,” they’ve told me. “There comes a time when you’re ready. We couldn’t have imagined that at your age either.”
Sometimes I see myself at my father’s funeral. Gripping both sides of the lectern, I pause the way Dad would. I develop eye contact. Then I launch into the one about the man who tells his wife he wants his ashes scattered in Bloomingdale’s so he can be sure she’ll come visit. The idea that something could happen to them won’t seem real until it has to. Why should it? What good does it do to taint the present with the inevitable? What good is premature mourning? If you’re lucky enough to have healthy parents, do you have to prepare for when your luck runs out?
The elevator door slams. I get the mail. There’s a letter from the university I went to asking to be remembered in my will. There’s a bulletin from the Authors Guild, they’d like something too. And what’s this from Florida?
RE: Florida Statute 765.05—Living Wills
I, Audrey Volk, willfully and voluntarily make known my desire that my dying will not be prolonged under the circumatances [
sic
] set forth below and hereby declare . . .
I consider the misspelling. Is this document valid? I’m supposed to let my mother go?
I punch her number. “Ma? I got your present today.”
Silence.
“I wanted to get you a Hallmark card. Something appropriate like:
Your living will means lots to me.
A gift that suits me to a tee.
Or maybe:
You gave me life!
I help you die!
You’re as sweet as
Apple pie!
We howl. Hurtling toward the apocalypse, we gasp for air.
The next time I go to Florida, they tell me they’re going to be buried aboveground in a wall.
“You can go in the horizontal way, or you can go in headfirst. Your father and I have decided to go headfirst.”
“Why, Ma?”
“It’s cheaper. Less space, darling.” Then she adds, “I hope you don’t mind. The fellow next to us has a cross.”
They are thrilled with the wall. Every time I go to Florida, Dad says, “Want to see the wall?”
Then a year or so goes by, and their dear friend Fran Boxer dies. She’s cremated, and they decide they don’t want the wall after all. They want to be
“You got my letter?” she says, tooling down Palmetto.
“If this is about the plots again, Ma, I don’t want the plots. I’ve decided. I’m getting cremated.”
“What?”
I remind her that the last time Dad took me to see his father’s grave in Brooklyn, Jacob Volk’s stone was listing. The plot was overgrown. Black swastikas were sprayed all over the place, and every piece of glass that protected the photographs on the head-stones was smashed. Has she forgotten how Dad’s sisters refused to chip in for the upkeep? “I’m going to be cremated, Ma. No one’s going to feel guilty because they haven’t visited my grave. No one’s going to vandalize it. No one’s going to fight over the maintenance charges.”
“Still,” she says, “the thought of it. . . .”
I tell her about my friend Madeline who keeps her mother and father in matching urns in the basement. She waves to them every time she does the wash.
My mother cracks up. What I really want to say is,
You can’t die
until I can’t make you smile.
Studying the slim, chestnut-haired twenty-year-old in the photo Mom has always kept on her dresser, I ask if Dad still looks like that to her.
“He seems just like the day I met him,” she says.
Sitting on his patio, overlooking a lake, my father says, “This isn’t a bad last view, is it? This isn’t a bad way to go.”
“Where ya going?” I say.
Knock wood, ward off the evil eye, I can’t picture anything happening to them. They both love their work. They both play killer tennis. They’ve both had run-ins with scary things, but what does that mean? Most people I know would be dead if it weren’t for modern medicine.
“We’re not afraid to die,” they’ve told me. “There comes a time when you’re ready. We couldn’t have imagined that at your age either.”
Sometimes I see myself at my father’s funeral. Gripping both sides of the lectern, I pause the way Dad would. I develop eye contact. Then I launch into the one about the man who tells his wife he wants his ashes scattered in Bloomingdale’s so he can be sure she’ll come visit. The idea that something could happen to them won’t seem real until it has to. Why should it? What good does it do to taint the present with the inevitable? What good is premature mourning? If you’re lucky enough to have healthy parents, do you have to prepare for when your luck runs out?
The elevator door slams. I get the mail. There’s a letter from the university I went to asking to be remembered in my will. There’s a bulletin from the Authors Guild, they’d like something too. And what’s this from Florida?
RE: Florida Statute 765.05—Living Wills
I, Audrey Volk, willfully and voluntarily make known my desire that my dying will not be prolonged under the circumatances [
sic
] set forth below and hereby declare . . .
I consider the misspelling. Is this document valid? I’m supposed to let my mother go?
I punch her number. “Ma? I got your present today.”
Silence.
“I wanted to get you a Hallmark card. Something appropriate like:
Your living will means lots to me.
A gift that suits me to a tee.
Or maybe:
You gave me life!
I help you die!
You’re as sweet as
Apple pie!
We howl. Hurtling toward the apocalypse, we gasp for air.
The next time I go to Florida, they tell me they’re going to be buried aboveground in a wall.
“You can go in the horizontal way, or you can go in headfirst. Your father and I have decided to go headfirst.”
“Why, Ma?”
“It’s cheaper. Less space, darling.” Then she adds, “I hope you don’t mind. The fellow next to us has a cross.”
They are thrilled with the wall. Every time I go to Florida, Dad says, “Want to see the wall?”
Then a year or so goes by, and their dear friend Fran Boxer dies. She’s cremated, and they decide they don’t want the wall after all. They want to be
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