Nancy

What do you do with when your dog dies? ### Easy. You take the thermos from Marlboro, the one your husband uses as a flask for his weekly football games, and put your dead dog’s ashes inside and take it to the Holy Land for an appropriate burial. ### Or at least that’s what my Mom did. The thermos was my Dad’s, a pack a day smoker; the thermos and a lifelong cough were his reward from a grateful tobacco company. Filled with scotch and soda, the thermos fit neatly in my father’s jacket pocket, a man-sized flask for football games. Or at least it was until the dog died. ### The thermos was the perfect urn for my mother’s 14-pound Lulu. My father never liked that dog, whose yapping would interrupt his afternoon naps on weekend when there was no game. Now, even after she was dead, she had managed to interfere with his pleasure. Lulu stayed in the thermos for several months, on a bookshelf in the den, until my parents traveled to Israel for a relative’s wedding. “I think we should take Lulu to the Holy Land,” my mother said, and so she was packed into a carry-on and stowed overhead on a flight to Tel Aviv. ### After the celebration, they traveled on to the Jordan River. My mother thought it would be fitting to scatter Lulu’s ashes in that famed Biblical river. They traveled north to a vacation area beyond the Galilee, staying at a kibbutz run chain of budget guest houses. A muddy tributary of the Jordan River circled the resort site. But the river was a disappointment. Picnic tables rested in the river, with benches in the river for tourists to dangle their bare feet in the shallow water as they devoured wine and cheese. A family of Arabs dined on upstream benches, while downstream a group of German tourists, also with their feet in the water, invited my parents to join them. The Marlboro thermos stood unopened, a centerpiece on the picnic table, as my father downed German beer and my mother’s determination to leave Lulu’s ashes in the Holy Land wavered. ### My father, however, had resolved to get his thermos back. Back in Jerusalem, he and my mother taxied up to the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Tombs of the Prophets. The catacombs contain the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world. My father announced his plan to scatter Lulu’s ashes in full view of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount. According to tradition, the resurrection of the dead is scheduled to take place at the Mount of Olives, once the Messiah arrives. Christian tradition has it that Jesus rose to heaven from there. ### The ancient tombs were scattered like Monopoly pieces along the hillside. Workers were eating an early lunch. Camels slumped curbside. ### Still early morning, it was already the hottest day of the year. Again, my mother wavered. It was such a hot, merciless site. Was this really the right final resting place for her beloved terrier? ### My father had a back-up plan. They descended to Gethsemane, at the base of the Mount, where ancient olive trees lined the road to Jericho. Here Jesus wept, and wandered the gnarled rows. My father readied to empty its contents over the wrought iron fence that enclosed the still grove, and my mother nodded her agreement; it was the perfect place. ### As he prepared to cast the ashes over the fence, a couple of robed priests strolled into the courtyard, eyeing the couple carefully as if they had been waiting for tourists to come from America to throw a dead dog’s ashes into the holy site. ### In the shadow of the Church of All Nations, my parents were forced to admit defeat. There was nothing to do but slink home, their joint mission a failure, the thermos of canine ashes tucked safely back in my suitcase. My mother was going to return Lulu to her perch on the bookshelf, when my father told her that dog or no dog, that thermos was going with him to the next football game. As good as his word, the thermos went with him, tucked into his jacket pocket until a touchdown lifted the fans from their seats and my father tossed Lulu into the deafening storm of cheers. And that’s how Lulu’s ashes came to be scattered over the field at the Meadowlands.