Postmodernpostmortem

(for AJ)

Death, such an amalgam of ironies: departure and gathering, silence and noise. The latter: every solemn moment is punctuated by the chugging of the diesel motor and the clanking of the tractor as it hauls trailer after trailer of dirt into the grave site. The dirt itself is a hodgepodge, a mass of brown dirt, gray rock, black and white pieces of what appear to be the same marble and porcelin used to adorn other gravestones, mausoleums and columbariums.  Thus, it is not only his father who is buried with each pathetic tear and each apathetic shovelful; he is covered and sealed into his resting place alongside bits and pieces of other people's lives and deaths, a mass grave that is gravely un-massive.

Enduring all this unceremonious ceremony in the infernal heat, Alvin says to himself, only half jokingly: "I want to be cremated when I die."