No. Next week is "Bring Your Daughter to Work" Day. This week is ...

Originally the only time we could pick up... well... I'm not exactly sure what or how to call it - pick up Florence, or the remains of..., or mom-in-a-can... but the only time we could pick her up from the non-profit full service funeral place was 8am to 3pm. I offered to do it before work, because a whole pictorial unfolded before my eyes.

"Bring Your Dead Mom to Work" Day!

I'd put the can by the computer or next to all the reports or maybe even in a file drawer during lunch time. If I really thought I could get away with it, I'd even do a series of mom on the escalator.

So I was very disappointed when Louise took the day off and picked her up and brought her back to Grand Street.

Louise put her under the piano. The place Florence put us from the moment we were born until we were just too big to pull it off. Now that space was filled with boxes of music theory and history books. A very lovely plastic bag with a velveteen bag in it surrounded by books from the 30's and 40's. "Beethoven's contrapuntal harmonies within the syncopated..." and mom.

Each time we went down there, we'd forget that was her and wonder what those bags were.

Finally Louise said, "I want to look. I think it's important to look."

We looked.

"Stop moving so much," I ordered. "you have pretty hands."



"It's not her," she stated.

Honestly, how could you tell? Then I realize she was talking concept.

The internet search about what one does with a can of mom let us know that our plan of surreptitiously dumping her at Coney, although truly the most honoring thing to do, was a) against the law and b) ran the risk of having recognizable pieces of bones surprise young dogs and swimmers.

That left me putting it in the high closet along with her reel-to-reel tapes or Louise burying her in her back yard. "What will it do to my plants?" ended that option.

Florence went back under the piano.

I'm just wondering where she hid Gramma's ashes.