PART 7

Part Seven

Always Leave Them

Wanting More  

Bessie and the Expensive Coffin Theory

My grandmother loved to bitch about the relatives in Red

Bank. She complained about everybody and everything, and she told us when she “dropped dead” not to bury her in “no expensive coffin.” She said: “They are crooks. You buy a fancy coffin, and when you are at the cemetery, they lower you into it in the grave for show. Then everybody walks away, and when nobody is watching, later they take you out and plop you into the ground in nothing and cover you up with the dirt and resell that coffin. It’s a big racket.”

She died in 1967. I remember a day before she was buried,

we went to see her at I.C. Plopper Funeral Home. She lay dead

in a beautiful coffin, and I stared at her dead body in there. I

could hear her calling to me from the beyond: “Marjala Mamala get me out of this here thing. I don’t want no fancy coffin and be dumped later in the dirt.”

I must have been standing there for some time because my

mother came over and I said, “Remember what Grandma said

about how she wanted to be buried in a cheap wood box?”

My mother looked surprised and said, “Yeah, she did

say that. I remember her saying that when she sat on the piano

bench.” Then she told me to “Shut up and go sit down.”

I was thinking about that today, and I think Grandma Bessie 

could have been onto something. I miss her. 

She was a wise woman.

I was also thinking about the time Bessie told me about

this talking dog she saw on TV. 

On command, the dog would say “Mama.”

My Mother Makes Joan Crawford

Look Like Carol Brady

When I was sick, her response was: 

“What do you want me to do? I am not a doctor.”

I recall when I woke up with a severe sore throat and told

my mother, she said, “Brush your teeth.” Remarkable. Maybe

she thought she was into some cutting-edge holistic cure.

When we argued, her usual response was to tell me that

“my true colors came out,” which actually was letting me know

she had some bizarre personality profile of me that was not flattering. It becomes interesting to note that she told that to me when I was twelve.

When any emotion was displayed by her children, her re-

action was to check into the hospital with “a high blood pressure attack.”

When I complained that I had too much work in college,

she flew into a rage and ripped up my textbooks and my note-

book with all of my Spanish literature translations.

Another gem she said, since I was thirteen: “You are waiting for me to die to get my money.” And she died almost broke.

I could go on and list 100 other serious ways she validated

she was severely abusive and psychotic, but why allow these vi-

gnettes to become my personal version of Flowers in the Attic?

Philosophy from The Crib

I think I got it! The clue is in the “tachyons!” I believe in rein-

carnation, and superstring theory in quantum physics hints that it is possible to “time travel.” When we “shuffle off this mortal coil,” the consciousness is no longer confined by matter or gravity. The “tachyons” of the mind tunnel FTL through wormholes, at black holes, to one of an infinite set of parallel universes where we can be born again forward or backward in time.

Such beauty exists in this simplicity. 

It is our consciousness after death that is the ultimate time traveler. 

We are all time travelers!

Oh, what a journey! I am left breathless by the infinite possibilities! 

Maybe I will live on a street in Wilmette, which is my personal Willoughby. Perhaps one glorious day, I will sit with Jack Kerouac at The White Horse Tavern. Maybe I will be one of the dames hanging with The Rat Pack at The Sands Hotel.

Maybe one great night, I will party with Marion Davies and William Hearst at San Simeon. I hope in a next life I remember not to book passage on the Titanic.

Can we begin to understand the strange cosmos? Perhaps

physicists are not hard-wired to ever find the mysterious and

elusive missing piece of the puzzle. Maybe we are just like little

goldfish... goldfish that will never ever even understand that 1 +1 = 2.

We all have a death sentence. But wait! We can get little

stays of execution along the way. It’s all about the postponements... the added time that allow us to continue enjoying whatever this is.

A Sunken Corridor

In stark contrast to New York City’s Highline is the “sunken

corridor,” which is an area of old tracks between 10th and 11th

Avenues, and they are visible on 45th Street through 

the cracks of the silver fences.

Many years ago, I took photos of that amazing sight and

I was even able to take a picture of a train down below as it

whizzed by. But all of the photos I took are lost. I now know

that no trains even use those railroad tracks any longer. My great shots of that “phantom train” will exist only in my recollection as it rode quickly by on that rainy Thursday afternoon, carrying invisible passengers to some 

unknown downtown destination.

That simple sight still sits on a vista in my mind where mem-

ories may one day move and vanish as quickly as that train on

that misty day.