Description
A few years ago, my father told me the story of how my Aunt Jenny's remains were shipped back to be put into different ground. Dad called me from Oklahoma to describe how my grandmother Edith stood by while workers dug up the urn from under the small brass marker that barely wrinkled the surface of the grass in Oak Park Cemetery. They opened the urn; Edith looked inside. I could see her standing there, in a tasteful suit and stockings and pumps, her light hair neatly and stiffly styled, bowing her head to see.
“There were actually quite large bone fragments mixed with the ashes," Dad said. The urn was too heavy for Edith to take on the plane from California to Oklahoma. So she shipped it U.P.S. Ground.
Three o’clock in the afternoon, and Shirley, of Shawnee Memorials, just across Harrison Avenue from Fairview Cemetery, was not taking any s**t off my dad. We had come here at my urging; Dad had mentioned that he still needed to order a stone to mark the plot where Jenny’s and Edith’s remains were...
Published 04/28/11
The sound of pistons pumping, a lawn-mower pulse and wheeze, comes up behind her, and she looks over her shoulder to see the VW coming up fast: black and chrome, some of the shine worn off and anyway looking duller in this flat November light. She keeps her thumbs hooked under the leather of her...
Published 04/22/11