I don’t suppose we’ll hear from the teenage tourists again until they reach Managua on Thursday.<\/p>\n
This follows \u00c3\u00acMore Than a Phone Call\u00c3\u00ae <\/a>, and I don\u00c3\u00adt think it stands alone. It\u00c3\u00ads a phone call I had with my mother about the funeral for the husband of my mother\u00c3\u00ads friend who shot himself in his living room.<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acYou went to the service for Alice\u00c3\u00ads husband\u00c3\u00ae?<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acWe did. It was a beautiful day, seven o\u00c3\u00adclock in the evening. Not even hot, no hotter than eighty.<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acWhere was he buried?\u00c3\u00ae <\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acThe cemetery on Oak Hill Road. It\u00c3\u00ads out 41, on a hill near Whirlpool?\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acThere are no hills near Whirlpool. it must have been past the airport.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n My mother loves it when I tell her she\u00c3\u00ads mistaken about something she knows is true. I think we might have been arguing perceptions.<\/p>\n Patiently, she answered, \u00c3\u00acIf you turn right near Whirlpool you go up a hill.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acWhirlpool is as flat as the nearby airport runway… .\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acThere were about twenty-five people. The cemetery had only markers, no upright stones, and it was touching to see the children and grandchildren running about, playing. Although my father wouldn\u00c3\u00adt have allowed it. He said stepping on graves was disrespectful. Alice was wearing a black pant\u00c3\u00ads suit she bought for the service. She weighs eighty-four pounds and her fitter said she was a size zero. I didn\u00c3\u00adt know there was such a thing.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acEighty-four pounds. How tall is she?\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acNot much taller than I, but she started losing weight when George got cancer.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acA woman who scrubs the blood of her husband off her carpets. I don\u00c3\u00adt know…I pictured someone bigger. How about Lisa, the daughter he was so close to?\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acShe was still pretty tore up.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n My precise mother never says \u00c3\u00actore up,\u00c3\u00ae and she\u00c3\u00ads probably cringing reading this, but it\u00c3\u00ads more evocative than \u00c3\u00actorn up.\u00c3\u00ae She said it this time, so it stays. <\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acLisa came with her husband and children. You know I always thought she had gay tendencies, but that\u00c3\u00ads because she had so closely imitated her father\u00c3\u00ads mannerisms. She walks like he did.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acNot to be morbid, but you saw them lower his body into the grave?\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acNo, no, he was cremated. They buried his urn next to his daughter\u00c3\u00ads grave, or they sprinkled his ashes on it. I couldn\u00c3\u00adt tell from where I sat. You remember that is what they did with Mack\u00c3\u00ads sister, Joan. Her ashes were placed in the ground next to her mother\u00c3\u00ads. I don\u00c3\u00adt know what people will do with me. Not that they will listen to what I want.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n Years ago, not long after her brother died, my mother and I argued about her burial. She wants to be cremated and her ashes flung out to sea, or buried in a garden, or enriched with an emulsion of sunflower seeds and fed to the cardinals – anything but a body in a grave. It\u00c3\u00ads not lying in dirt, it\u00c3\u00ads the waste of space, of her burden on the environment. I was adamant. I wanted her in the ground, somewhere I could go and talk to her. I didn\u00c3\u00adt want to be following some nesting song bird just just to say, \u00c3\u00acHi.\u00c3\u00ae It wasn\u00c3\u00adt too long after this conversation that I decided chasing birds wasn\u00c3\u00adt so bad. <\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acWe listen, you know we do. We\u00c3\u00adll do what you want.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n \u00c3\u00acJust be sure you play a recording of Tess (Brian\u00c3\u00ads wife) on the Tabla Drums. It\u00c3\u00ads hard to get people to do what you want. Alice couldn\u00c3\u00adt get the minister she wanted for the funeral. You know, they weren\u00c3\u00adt church going people. But she has iron up her back, she told me, \u00c3\u00ab We\u00c3\u00adre just going to have to do it ourselves.\u00c3\u00ad \u00c3\u00ac<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t suppose we’ll hear from the teenage tourists again until they reach Managua on Thursday. This follows \u00c3\u00acMore Than a Phone Call\u00c3\u00ae , and I don\u00c3\u00adt think it stands alone. It\u00c3\u00ads a phone call I had with my mother … Continue reading