Odd things happen to me every day. I barely consider them odd anymore until I tell the story and mouths drop open and stop me mid-sentence. I pause, wondering…doesn’t this kind of thing happen to everyone? Maybe not, but it all seems normal to me.
Some time ago, my boyfriend died. He knew he was dying and he asked me to handle his final arrangements.
It’s not the kind of thing you can turn down.
At least not without imagining, thunder and lightning and all sorts of doom. So I said ok…what do you want?
He wasn’t a traditional kind of man so he didn’t want a traditional burial. He asked to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the ocean.
I don’t live anywhere near an ocean so when the time came, I decided on a river. I figured they’d get to the ocean eventually.
In life he was a joker and in death, I found out, that hadn’t changed. He was also a morning person.
I was not.
So in his honor, I decided to rise before the sun and scatter his ashes when daylight was breaking. In hindsight, it was well-intentioned but not well thought out.
It was April and the grass at that time of day was wet, very wet. The best spot on the river, the one where I imagined a beautiful but solemn dedication, was best accessed through the graveyard.
I hadn’t thought of that.
I don’t like scary movies and walking through the graveyard in the dark was not my idea of a good time, but I was determined to make this meaningful.
Finally at the river, I slipped my way through the mud to the bank and sat on a rock that was conveniently at the edge of the water. I looked around to see a beautiful blue heron standing in the river, probably wondering what I was doing there. I reached into my knapsack and pulled out the highly lacquered box. Polished wood glistened with the approaching dawn and I took out a small penknife to open the box.
I should have brought a machete.
The glue they used to seal the box was black. That should have been my first clue. Hard as cement. Maybe even harder. I sat on the rock, with the box and the knife, and contemplated my dilemma. Digging in with the penknife had not even made a dent in the inpenetrable fortress they called an urn. I needed something stronger. I picked up a rock laying nearby and for the next fifteen minutes pounded at the knife stuck in the glue, to no avail.
The sun, of course, had risen and I worried about what someone driving by might think, as I sat near the river on my quest. It didn’t take long for frustration to set in and then anger. This was not the dignified, solemn occasion I pictured it to be. I could however, picture him laughing hysterically and slapping his knee while I fought with the box.
The stages of grief it appears also apply to breaking into urns. Acceptance arrived and I stomped home, box still undamaged and a serious headache beginning to form. I know he was laughing. Impossible in life and impregnable in death.
I decided to try again but first I was going to open the box before I left the house. Turning it over, I noticed screws on the bottom that I hadn’t seen in the dark. Aha! I loosened them all and went back to bed.
Midnight was the time I decided on, but there was no way I was walking through that cemetery again. I decided the bridge would have to do. I stood on the bridge and said a little prayer, opened the box and was about to pour out the ashes, when I noticed the police cruiser.
I froze.
He drove slowly doing his evening rounds and I held my breath. If he turned his head, he would see me on the bridge and how was I going to explain why I was standing on a bridge in the middle of the night? Plus it was illegal to dump ashes. I pictured myself in the back of the cruiser headed for jail. Lucky for me, he continued on and I flung the ashes over the bridge and hightailed it out of there.
It wasn’t the memorial I had imagined, but he would have loved it.
And I just know, he was laughing hysterically.
karenservice 
DREAM JOBS COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES
Dream jobs really do come in all shapes and sizes. That was the lesson I learned today from a good friend of mine and one I will carry around, whenever I see someone doing a job that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
We were chatting, as we usually do, about work and family and the state of the universe, when I mentioned, I had to drive my daughter to her job at the grocery store. She perked right up then and said “Oh my God, that’s my dream job!”
I have to admit, that threw me a little, because grocery store cashier is definitely not on my list of dream careers and certainly not on my daughter’s.
I had to ask why.
She answered me with this, “Well, you can tell so much about a person, by what they have in their cart. It’s very revealing”
I should have asked the next logical question. “But why would you want to know that?” but I didn’t. Instead I half listened, as she talked about different shopping excursions and what she had purchased.
My mind was still back at “Oh my God, that’s my dream job!”
It got me thinking about what my dream job is and I realized I’m already doing it. Just not getting paid. Well, not yet anyway.
I think I’ll watch people a little more closely and wonder if they are living their dream or just passing time until their dream job comes along.