Pauper's Grave

Originally Posted Monday, January 7, 2013

I had a lovely dinner with my mother last night at her house.  She made roast pork with dressing inside. It surprised me as she was a working mother who cooked basic meals my entire life.  She came home from work and began dinners that would fill our bellies.  My father sat in a chair.  After dinner, my mother cleaned the dishes.  My father would cook breakfast because he wanted bacon and eggs, but he'd leave all the dishes on the table.  It is what men did in my neighborhood if not farther afield.  But my mother was the only woman working in my neighborhood, so she got the double curse--pain of childbirth and bread by the sweat of her brow.  She told me she had never thought of that before. 

She is a devout Christian, a Mormon who doesn't understand why people think that religion is different than others.  Still, she thinks other people's religions are silly by and large.  And having an nihilist for a son must make her sad.  Especially during and after such a grand meal.  But I've been thinking much about such things lately.  My mother's sister died and this past week she got word that her old boyfriend had died, too.  He was 93.  I imagine what things like that make you think when you are in your eighties. 

So last night, I reminded her that when I die, someone will have to pay the pall bearers to get me to the grave as I will have no family left when she dies.  I can't imagine any of my friends wanting to participate in a funeral.  They might think it a shame that I died--perhaps--but really, I don't think anyone will really know that I've gone.  Somehow we began talking about the afterlife, and I explained my thoughts about magical thinking, saying that one can believe anything and that Ron L. Hubbard's Scientology makes as much sense as any other make believe story.  Why do I do it?  It is selfish.  Thinking back, I believe I was trying to make her feel better that she will have someone to take care of everything and that she will go believing that there is a better place for her "out there."  That is what I think I intended, but I'm pretty sure it didn't turn out that way. 

Many people have died unnoticed to be buried in a pauper's grave.  No fear.  It can be done.