LAST WISH

Her suicide note, handwritten in a meticulously looping cursive script, left explicit instructions for disposal, saying: “DO NOT BURY ME IN THE GROUND. I want to be cremated. It’s your decision what to do with my ashes, but under no circumstances do I want my dead body pumped full of formaldehyde and pancake batter, and stuffed in a five thousand dollar wooden box to slowly rot for a hundred years.”

When the police gave him the note, he read it three times in a row, very slowly. He put the note in his pocket and a couple hours later, ripped it up and threw it down a sewage drain. On the tombstone he had the engraver write:

Dolores Elizabeth Menken

1973-2012

Beloved Mother and Wife

He never told anyone about the existence of the note and its cursive list of demands—not any of his friends, not Dolores’ parents, not his two sons. When the funeral director asked if there were any special clothes or objects that he would like her body dressed in, he picked her least favorite dress and a necklace of cheap fake pearls. At the funeral when he looked at her lying in the coffin, he found himself glaring at the wedding ring she still wore on her hand, and wondered if anyone would notice if he reached in and pried it off her stiff, dead finger.

He didn’t steal her wedding ring. Instead, he leaned against the three thousand dollar wooden box and wept. He cried frozen, angry tears. One rolled down his cheek and dropped on the floor—a single frozen tear. It cracked into two pieces when it hit the floor. Still crying, he reached down to pick up the tear. He held it in his hands for five seconds before flinching and shaking his hand in pain. Although the outside of his tears were ice cold, the inside of them were burning hot. The worst part was seeing the children cry. They were still too young for frozen tears. Their tears were as hot as lava. Their tears scalded their cheeks and burned their eyes--which only made them cry harder. They were inconsolable. Meanwhile their mother was lying in a coffin, her body stuffed full of formaldehyde and pancake batter.

It's unfair that the dead are supposed to be granted one last wish, he thought. The living have so many wishes of their own.