Luella’s Ashes

February 2022

My wife’s ashes were ready for pickup three days ago. She died January 19th. The excuse for the delay was that winter is a busy time for the funeral business. She would not have cared. She gave no thought to what became of her after she died, didn’t consider it worth her time. I tried to see the delay at the funeral service the same way, but the idea of her lying in a cold morgue all this time bothered me. Most of her life she felt cold even though the temperature in our living room remained, summer and winter, 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I once saw a photo of her taken when she and her first husband were camping out on their way back to the east coast after a year spent at a university in Oregon. She is still in her sleeping bag. Her eyes are only half-open. She looks as if, were it up to her, she would no more come out of that bag than a cat would jump into a cold lake….. (Read more.)