joe

Marlboro?

“What do you think of that?” he said pulling the tubular artifact from the shelf.
“It is hideous,” he remarked turning from the object as though it were infected with typhoid.
“Hideous? Don’t you mean that you are, as usual, being intimidated by an inanimate object?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all. Dad is lying in the hospital, kept alive only by scientific ingenuity, and you are suggesting that we place his ashes as requested in an object that represents the cause of his demise?”
“I am suggesting no such thing. Father asked that we find something appropriate, but cheap, to transport his ashes to the Golden Gate Bridge where we are to discretely let him drift into the bay. I can only imagine the winds blowing him on to Alcatraz where he’ll be imprisoned for eternity like a common criminal. This is important stuff whether you recognize the significance or not.”
“You seem, as usual to have missed the point. Dad wanted us to not spend money unnecessary to carry out his wishes. He hated the idea of spending thousands to dispose of what he considers to be little more than organic matter; celery leaves, tomato skins, you know what I mean. He doesn’t plan to inhabit the places his ashes visit; rather he wishes only to be given the opportunity to not take up space in an already overpopulated planet. So he’s dieing of lung cancer. The probability of his dying from lung cancer after smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for forty years should be something you can find most easily on your actuarial tables.”
“And you don’t seem to understand the significance of placing his remains in an article labeled with an advertising message that promotes killing oneself by inhalation of a deadly substance that is not only reprehensible but addictive. It would have been more acceptable had he died of an overdose of some drug which would have been quicker and more humane. He in effect killed himself with rubber bullets, if one considers the time and agony necessary to inhale tars and nicotine’s over years. You don’t see the significance, but I do. It would be like putting the Marlboro logon on his coffin, complete with the silhouette of the Marlboro Man himself on the lid.”
“So we should put him in a coffee can? He did drink coffee you know. Or perhaps pickle jars? He loved pickles, especially in Bloody Marys. When he could still function mentally, he suggested, he didn’t care. You are reading into this vessel a sense of morality that did not exist in his mind. I really don’t think he’d care if we transported him in a shoe box. You have anything against Buster Brown? I know the company doesn’t exist anymore, but I still have the box; full of baseball cards which I might mention are worth a considerable sum.”
“Can we come to some sort of agreement that will make us both feel comfortable and adhere to his wishes?”
“How about this, we put him in Clallam Cards back pack, which he saved for God knows what reason, and recite his favorite line from having watched the episodes with us when we were kids.”
“And what might that be?”
“You don’t remember? I don’t know how you could forget. Listen, remember. “Birdie with the yellow bill, hopped upon my window sill, cocked his shinning eye and said, what’s that on the road, a head?”
“Are you nuts?”