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We Brought My Mom’s Ashes Home Last Week and I Still Don’t Know How to Feel About It
I’m not sure if this is a rant, a lament, or a drunken ramble
A quick glance at the bottle of Wild Turkey beside my laptop tells me that I may be a little drunk as I type this; normally that’s not the ideal state to be in when writing unless your name is Hemingway, but in this case it is completely unavoidable. I may ultimately delete it when I’m done, unless it reaches the 700-word mark. I publish everything 700 words or more, and the still-sober part of my brain is warning me to stop at 695 or risk being seen as a terrible son.
That risk exists because, as you know if you read my recent story on the musical legacy she left me, my mom died on the 19th of this month. She was 83 and had run a better race than I ever will, remaining in good health physically and mentally until a severe case of pneumonia changed all that exactly one year ago. It’s a risk because, like Antony with Caesar, I come today not to praise her but to bury her. Except that I can’t do that, and therein lies my problem.
We have some longstanding family traditions when it comes to death. For one, we joke about it the whole time we’re alive, which really doesn’t make it any easier when it finally happens, but tradition is tradition. Another…
