Two-fer

You Urned it, Gary


Before you read this, let me qualify you: Do you believe in an afterlife?  If not, then just stop reading and move along to the next entry because you'll just blow me off on this one anyway...

OK. They're gone.

About 6 weeks ago, I walked into the bedroom where Gary was lying in bed watching TV. Our TV is in a converted armoire.  When we moved in the house in late July, I put a picture and an urn shaped vase on the top of the armoire.  Every day I would open the doors and shut them. The armoire is a primitive Mexican piece that Gary converted and painted black.  The clasp is kinda tight and you have to push hard to get it shut. I opened and shut this thing every morning and every night for the last 4 months or so.

So, as I was saying, I walked in the bedroom and Gary asked, "That urn on the top of the armoire-- can my ashes be put in there? I really like that thing and it'd be nice to be put in it." I got the urn at Hobby Lobby about 18 months ago to go into our bathroom in Mentone.  Its just the right shade of aqua blue and brown to go with our bedspread and bathroom still. It has a bronze metal top and bottom(much prettier than the picture above) and I thought it was one piece when I bought it.
I told Gary, "You can't be put into that because its not a real urn.  The lid doesn't really come off.  Besides, I am going to make you into a diamond."  "Oh." was all he said as he looked at the urn some more. 
Now I have learned more about the ashes into a diamond process.  It only takes about 10 oz of ashes to compress into a diamond.  I have much more than I need to do that and still spread Gary's ashes into the Pacific sometime.
Day before yesterday, I walked into the room and shut the doors on the armoire.  I was startled when something thumped and fell on me.  The picture had fallen to the floor but was unbroken.  I got the stepstool out to put it back on top. While up there,  I looked carefully at that urn again.  I saw that it is made kind of like a lamp with a center rod that screws into the base and the lid.  The center is hollow.  PERFECT for ashes!  I put a zipper sandwich bag of Gary into the urn where he wanted to be.  Part of him can now overlook me as I sleep. 
How many hundreds of times have I shut the doors and nothing happened!? 
Gary's spirit is out there, obviously.  Isn't that cool?

Its whats inside that counts.

Remember when cereal almost always had free crap inside to get kids to want it so badly that moms gave in and bought it for them?  This was especially true of the sugar sweetened stuff that WE kids could never buy.

The outside of the box alone would attract shoppers' attention so much that you would want to buy the product for that reason alone.

I have 'marketed' my house for the season in this same way.  I don't want to appear as a Scrooge so I have 2 Christmas flags,  3 wreaths, red flowers in pots and a planter full of poinsettias by the front door under the green porch light. On the outside my house looks completely 'normal', like a happy snowbird couple is inside making wassal and decorating sugar cookies for the season.

While inside, Oh Holy Night It Ain't.  I'm not going to put a tree up or get out any of the boxed Christmas crap that is stored in the hanging storage rack which Forrest helped Gary install in September IN the 110 degree heat! Am I being black hearted? Who cares!?  Robbie doesn't give a sheet if I put that stuff out and I am too lazy to put it up and take it down just for myself, so why would I want to do it? 
Maybe next year?  I don't know. WWGD?  I know he'd say, "Do what you feel like.  If you don't want to put it out, then don't."  Gary, I like the way you think.