THE PEANUT GALLERY: Drawing Clumsy

I often wonder, when is it we begin to lose our imagination? When do we stop dreaming the impossible, and start to stare cold hard reality in the face? When did things get so complicated, that we can't find the simple solution?

One night for homework, Peanut had to come up with six words that start with "cl" and draw a picture of each thing. One of her words, she decided, would be "clumsy." I loved that she chose this word. But my black-and-white adult brain silently wondered, "How is she going to draw clumsy?" It's so abstract. I couldn't imagine how one would draw an adjective.

So I waited. I helped her spell the words she chose. And I waited for her finished product:

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My Dying Wish

"He would make a lovely corpse." -Charles Dickens

Till death do us part. It's in the vows, yo. The only thing that will separate me from My Director is a dirt nap. Marriage. When you think about the whole thing, committing yourself entirely to one person for the rest of your life, it's pretty freakin' deep. I love it. Until you're six feet under. And that's pretty freakin' shallow. I don't love that.

This photo is just dripping with irony, is it not?

So shallow, in fact, that it creeps me out. Since I first experienced death with my Grandpa Sal when I was 11 years old, the thought of being buried totally gave me the heebie jeebies. The thought of dirt and bugs and just laying there rotting...gross. I can't handle it. Just mentioning it makes me nauseous. I decided at a pretty young age that I wanted to be cremated. I didn't really think about it until decades later when my dad died, and was cremated. "Oh yeah," I thought. "That reminds me. Sign me up for one of those too please."

Over My Director's dead body. Whenever the subject of our final resting place comes up, she puts me in my place.

"You're not getting cremated," she insists. "I want to be buried and I want you next to me. So you're getting buried." 

"Not if I go first," I counter. 

"You wouldn't," she shrugs. 

"No. I would respect your wishes because I love you," I admit.

Yet, she would not do the same. The sad and frustrating part of this whole morbid mess is that it's inevitable that I will die first. The man almost always does. You know why? Because we're tired and eventually we just want quiet. Some uninterrupted sleep.

"I can't believe you would do that to me. Deliberately go against my wishes," I protest. Meekly. 

"What do you care?" She says. "You'll be dead." She's cruel is what she is. 

"If you go first," she reasons, "I want a place to go and visit you. With a headstone and a bench. Maybe under a tree somewhere. So I can talk to you and tell you about my day."

It's a little worrisome that she's planned my death in pretty vivid detail, don't you think? I'm rethinking my recent purchase of an axe for chopping firewood. While that sucker might come in handy during the zombie apocalypse, maybe My Director has other plans for it first.

"If I'm in an urn, you can take me with you. Wherever you go," I tell her. "I'm so portable." 

"No." 

"We can BOTH be cremated and Peanut can spread our ashes somewhere special. Somewhere we love. Like the beach at LBI. Or Venice. Or at Syracuse." 

"It's too cold at Syracuse. I don't want to be there for eternity." 

"But it's where we met." 

(Shakes her head and wrinkles her nose in disgust.)

Now she's just being unreasonable. So I give in, with a quid pro quo.

"Fine. Bury me," I say. "But no open casket. I don't want to be preserved or put in a box. If you're going to bury me, just dig a hole and dump me in. No chemicals. That way I become one with the earth. You know, the circle of life."

"No. That's gross." 

"Right. Which is why I want to be cremated in the first place." 

"I'm putting you in a coffin." 

"Please don't. I'm claustrophobic. And it's such a waste of money. You're gonna need that money." 

"You're insured."

WTF?!

When I do die, she will have final say. She will make the decision and I will be powerless to stop her. She handles our finances. She plans our social calendar.  She even gets to control the television most of time. Now she's got her sights set on my afterlife.

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All in the Family

"Don't make fun of your mother. It's a sin against your soul." -My mom.

I don't call my mom as much as I should. Timing is mostly to blame. That's lame, I know. But sometimes when I think of calling her, it's too late. I know she's either asleep or...

Mom and I at a family wedding a few years ago.

One of the things I find most amusing, but sometimes most aggravating, about my mom is that I can tell how many glasses of wine she's had on a given night by the number of times I have to ask her the same question before I get an answer. The later I call, the more glasses of wine that have been consumed. And the more likely the conversation is, shall I say, colorful. This not only leads to a lot of repeated questions during the conversation, but repeated conversations the next time we talk.

For instance, she actually called me on the Monday AND Tuesday after Easter, to ask me how our Easter with my in-laws was. "Mom," I said on the second call. "What is this, Groundhog Day?" Then she insists we didn't talk yesterday, and the conversation becomes a blow-by-blow account of what we had discussed previously. A little bit of this is age. A lot of it is wine.

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