I didn’t follow my father’s instructions this time. I just tucked his ashes into my inner coat pocket, where they warmed me with the good memories of pregame paella feasts and watching the Hurricanes, in the built over old Orange Bowl now Miami Marlins Stadium.
All the anesthesiologists, the lawyers, his employees— his old crew—performed his scattering script line by line, each tiny urn cupped in their hands, labeled with full business card name, professional title, and destination: the precise pine, the creek bed, the communal fire pit and pergola, or some scenic restorative site with stone benches awaiting them, to contemplatively scatter his cremains over, on, and under everything— except the deer feeder just off the gravel house road. The Does and their fawns must be allowed to feed in peace.
Afterwards, there’s a catered buffet— shrimp cocktail, bbq pork and just baked cookies. A smooth jazz quartet is doing a prescribed gig in the background, a slideshow of hospital fundraisers clicking efficiently through in the foreground. Tranquility, the name of his shore house, smells of iodoform and Sea Breeze aerosol.
My divorced younger sister stands polished in her her best funeral dress, chatting up my dad’s estate lawyer. My older brother, in a hand-me-down suit, sans his COVID-averse, frail wife, looks uncomfortable, not sure whether he should cry a public tear or retreat to the house basement to shed a private one. My autistic younger brother flutters and wanders from from the tent to food to going back to the guest house to watch TV, unaware that it is locked for the ceremony.
I watch from the screened in porch and remember my mother’s funeral: all my hermanos y mi hermana, my primos y primas my six tios y seven tias cramming into Iglesia de la Santa Cruz- All my mother’s Seven Sisters crying out she was the most beautiful, like they'd voted it unanimously the night before, a truth each one already knew— The Six Brothers singing boleros about her— the kind her husband, now my dead father never found the mood or will to croon— How the priest couldn't compete with the vocal flowers blooming, so he foregoes the usual homilies, eulogies, the hymns— and lets her loud, joyful family sing and cry their love.
As the mourners scatter my father’s ash over Tranquility I picture my mother’s legs under a blue blanket, bandaged and bruised, her voice still praising my poems, even when she couldn't see them anymore.— Her last gesture of love— a line I wrote— with lines of her favorite hymn— a rosary prayer. She died while I was away at a movie— one silly, violent and romantic.
And then in the last of ashes stirring in the wind, she appeared, my ex— She with the box of movie stubs, the binders full of Tom Sellleck and Benedict Cumberbatch photos and glossy articles crammed with celebrity magazine puffery— the curio cabinet full of our travel souvenirs— postcards mailed home, old currency— British pounds, and Francs, each anchored with enough pennies, shillings— sous, and centimes to keep them from flying in the still vacuum of her grief vault— She who hated crowds, said vile things without shame— but bought me gifts so emotionally precise they felt both apology— and intimacy all at once. She died when I was on a break from her hospice vigil— after I stepped out for three hours- long enough for absence, loneliness, and diabetes— to finish the job they began— She whose love for me was so fierce— It exceeded my mother's.
I cleaned her condo- the one I owned and rented to her- the best I could, donated her clothes and the stuff she loved, and others could still love— to Goodwill— threw all the remaining broken things away. There was no ceremony, just me and my wife flying back home to Chattanooga with her ashes in a cardboard box labeled “Cremains.” I put her ashes in an Egyptian urn scrawled with hieroglyphics— one final act of grace that I knew she would adore— forever— and then placed the urn under the large bedroom console that held my big screen TV and had enough cubby holes to hold her—and the remains of four well-loved fur babies.
No one brought me casseroles or mailed me sympathy cards. at the time. No neighbor paused at the mailbox to ask how I’m holding up, to say “sorry for your loss.” She was just another to mourn and grieve—and archive.
When the last smell of the buffet subsided— the last of my father’s named faithful mourners had headed to their rental cars, to the airport, to their homes— where a nice condolence check from my father’s estate lawyer awaited them in their mailbox or was directly deposited— I knew my father’s tiny urn would rest just above my ex— and between my fur babies.
Alone with my thoughts, I dwelled on these deaths— and then— my own— If I die tomorrow, I don’t know who will come— Certainly, my wife and my autistic brother.— Maybe my sister with first folded— and then, up-stretched hands— Maybe an old work friend who tracks my Facebook page— What about all the others who won't come but will send my wife flowers with the wrong name on the card?— Someone who read and loved a poem I wrote.— Someone who will patiently help my wife with the keeping and disposing of my stuff— who will find under the unfiled bank statements in my office drawer— a half-finished stanza and wonder if it is funny.
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