Life changes in the instant.
While I wish I could take credit for this simple yet powerful observation, the credit goes to the remarkable Joan Didion. It’s how she starts The Year of Magical Thinking which chronicles a year following the death of her husband, writer John Dunne. She preserves the news until she can deliver it to the first person who should hear it, their daughter (Quintana) who lays in a coma. Sound depressing?
It’s actually uplifting. By keeping John alive, she holds onto every detail Quintana should know in order to digest the news when the time comes. To frame the event. Preserve the experience.
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- Does she still dine at their favorite restaurant? Yes.
- Has she moved his clothes? No.
- Does she talk to him? Every day.
Nothing dies that is remembered. Can’t take credit for that one either. Credit is due to another one of my faves; T.S. Eliot.
Now I had a day of magical thinking thanks to Allen (dad) who demanded upon his death that I destroy all evidence of him as quickly as possible before telling anyone he split. I had to get him to a crematorium within a few hours, clean out his closet and take all his belongings to a dumpster. Once accomplished, I could then and only then present reports of the passing of Allen Abraham Namian.
No funeral. No memorial service. No nothing.
Me: Daddy, but what about Janet? She’s your wife. She should know, shouldn’t she?
Allen: Especially not her. She’ll turn it into a death debacle. I just want to disappear.
So I did it. I still have his ashes inside the same FedEx box they were delivered in. I guess I could buy an urn but I don’t like urns. They wreak of ash holder and I want something that wreaks of I’m still here. My father would turn his nose up at the idea anyway. When Allen said he wanted to disappear, he meant it. When the hospital called to tell me he passed, I hightailed it to Connecticut and got things done so fast I forgot to remove his college ring from his finger. I had to go back to the morgue and yank it off his dead finger. And yes it was gross but he was the very first college graduate of an immigrant family and it meant a lot. He always wore it. A wedding band? Never wore one. Hmmmm.
Then my mother decides to die. I got her ashes Fed Ex’d to me without having to take the drive up that horrific Merritt Parkway to Connecticut yet again. Her post-life rules were less demanding than Allen’s. Janet would go along with the urn thing only if she got to pick it out herself and have me swear to dust it every day.
So then there were two. Boxes of ashes that is.
I took to the Internet to see if there were any new ways to preserve ashes. Turns out there’s tons. I could press them into a plate. I could turn them into a pendant. I could stuff them into a teddy bear and hug them. Okay how gross are these options? Imagine carving into a juicy piece of steak and scratching your parents? Leaving the pendant (them) behind in a cab? Your teddy bear springs a leak and there’s ash all over the #1 subway platform. Why would I be hugging my teddy bear on a subway platform? Oh come on, because I want to take them places they’ve never been. They took me to the Bronx Zoo. Fair is fair. I should take them down to the 9/11 Memorial.
Do I really want to keep my parents that alive? I gotta rethink this. They’ve been in my sock drawer a few years and now they’re in my linen closet next to the bath towels. For some reason, it works. I see them every day as long as my hygiene stays up to par. Hygiene is a 24/7 commitment.
One website claims they turn ashes into a tree. I thought about that a bit but what if the tree dies? I’d never be able to process that. I drowned my parents? Kept them in the sun too long?
So Joan was able to keep John alive for a year. Good for her. My options of transformation seem risky. With my luck, if I had them pressed into a beautiful sculpture it would experience a terrible crash. Glass all over the place.
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.