my mother wants to be cremated.
and it’s strange, I’m sure her parents
are buried in adjacent plots
in a cemetery together,
you know, a place to bring flowers,
a place to come and mourn
a place to have your own little plot of land
in the afterlife
and after raising five Catholic kids
I thought they would have
wanted their corpses to be together
in their own little plots of land
for all of eternity
and wait a minute, is it a doctrine
or only superstition
that the Catholic church
says you’d go to Hell
if after death
your body didn’t remain in tact
but
she wants to be cremated.
and she hasn’t told my father.
& my sister wants to take some of her ashes
to make a half carat blue diamond
for herself.
you know, to have something of her
other than her ashes.
that’s not morbid.
I don’t know, maybe we could put
some of her ashes
into an hour glass
where her ashes become hermetically sealed
& the hour glass can be a constant reminder
of how life can slip away.
once again, morbid.
but how do you not get slap-happy
if you’ve been thinking about this
for too long
& you have to listen to
what will be dome with your mother’s body
after she dies
well, I’ve always said I use laughter
to cover grief.
I’m a real comedian.