Yesterday this house was host to a big barbecue. How could you not want to be here for that? The ashes from the mosquito coil make the same shape on the big tiles on the floor, a spiral of ashes around a little sheet of metal that just looks silly now, purposeless. The ashes are still there, they haven’t scattered, they’re still exactly where they fell. Your cat does twists and licks her lips on the patio floor. So captivating. I stop and cover her with kisses. She sheds, and my mouth gets hair all over it. Tricolor hair. Cat hair. Now she cleans herself, licking between the pads of her paws, her claws, her little claws, licking her nose.
In the end the ceremony’s going to be on Sunday. Yesterday your sister came, which was what did it. I was pretty out of it, I couldn’t really connect, but I still shared my opinion. They couldn’t decide. Your parents, especially your mom, had this idea of just putting the ashes in the ground by the poplar in the back, why make such a fuss, that she liked the idea that the ashes would remain there, at the house where you’d lived all your life. Your dad didn’t say much, I think he was fine with it, or in any case he couldn’t come up with anything better. Your sister had already said she wasn’t too super excited about any of it, just in general, that to her it was just dredging things up for no reason, that she had already made this known, that they already knew, that so whatever they wanted to do was fine. That they could just let her know when on Sunday, and where, and that was that. That she’d come for the barbecue and just to see her parents, and to say hi to me, too, of course. And that that was it. Meanwhile I—who knows why—waxed poetic. It surprised me they weren’t more decisive, or, at least, more imaginative when it actually came to the ceremony. Especially considering they had suggested it. I said that I liked the idea of scattering your ashes from the bridge, into the river, that it might sound cliché or whatever and that I knew it wasn’t a place that could be all that much associated with you, per se, especially compared with your house, but that I didn’t know, that I knew you did like going there, to the river, that ultimately it was the thought of your ashes falling freely and scattering out over the valley, of them flying, that was the good part about it; that putting them in the back behind your house was after all a way to bury them, and that maybe it would be good to take the ceremony, the concept of the ceremony, to more of an idea of freedom. I also said, on a roll now, that I remembered this movie I’d seen, which wasn’t about this or anything, but that this somehow reminded me, or for whatever reason I just associated the image. A movie where at the end, in the last scene, the girl throws herself off a kind of bridge too, in the mountains of Mongolia or wherever, the movie was Chinese, the girl was Chinese, and she was committing suicide, but it wasn’t a suicide, or anyway it wasn’t sad because she was flying, she stayed suspended between the clouds that were there, floating in the air, and it was sad and poetic and beautiful. I didn’t say all of that, I decided to omit the suicide and poetry. Your sister, who had her mouth full, said that that was fine with her but that we’d need to go right around noon because when the sun’s not hitting the bridge directly it’s simply way too cold. Practical. Your mom got a little bit emotional, you could tell it was a little harder for her to think about this getting rid of—because it is that, too—your ashes. Your dad thought it was a nice idea. So then, ultimately, so did your mom.