by Cheryl Mathis on July 21st, 2008
Before dinner last night, my little family and I went to Schofield FunDays to have some community time. We basked in the boyish bliss of the bounce house and giant inflatable slide until our delight was tainted by the actions of one woman on the playground.
As a way to lure our toddler son away from the rides, we promised him some playground time at the school playground near where we had parked. I ran around with Ben, taking too many pictures of him as usual, and Chris stayed on a bench with Baby Anna.
A woman with children came to join us, but she sat down next to Chris and lit up a cigarette, just a couple feet away from Anna’s face. We left. Ben has asthma, and Anna, as a preemie, is especially susceptible.
We were in public and outside, so that’s a smoking area, right? Sure, but it’s a school playground.
Chris and I hotly debated the issue on the way home. We were both outraged and indignant by her rudeness, but I drew similarities between people who are sensitive to cigarette smoke and people who get migraines when in the presence of perfume wafting through the air. When do the rights of the sensitive people outweigh those of others?
Though I smoked for several years, I don’t anymore, mostly because of my children but also because the severity of my family history of lung cancer finally knocked itself into my thick skull.
Soon after quitting, I became hypersensitive to the smell of cigarette smoke. I avoided it because it made me long for the good ol’ days when I could indulge. When I was pregnant, I avoided it for the sake of my gestating baby, and I was annoyed but resigned to walking through the smoking section of the Log Cabin Restaurant to get to the restroom.
Like the sensitive people who avoid perfume, I now avoid cigarettes. I walk away. I pack up my kids and leave. I silently judge those who smoke in their children’s faces. I quietly hope that someday, the desire to quit wins out over the nicotine addiction.
How do you feel about smoking bans? Should there be different rules for places for children rather than for adult places like bars?
by Tom Neal on July 16th, 2008
This week, I was riding my bike on the east side when a strong, oily smell smote my nostrils. I looked around and saw a darkish cloud roiling above a funeral home. “Oh, cripes! They’re incinerating someone!” was my first reaction. And I somewhat recoiled at the sight; and unreasonably so. After all, they do indeed burn dead people — they call it cremation. You get to keep the ashes of your loved one if you want; you can hold onto them or scatter them in some special place.
But, having that blackish smoke invade my day was sobering and I couldn’t help feeling offended or intruded upon. Thought, “Shouldn’t they do this at night?” I always thought that funeral ovens were so incredibly hot that there would be no troublesome smoke. And indeed, as I stood with my bike, transfixed by the evidence of the ceremony within, the smoke was replaced by clear, shimmery heat waves emanating from the large chimney. (Mission accomplished.) I wondered, “What does the roof look like? Lots of bits of burned people up there?”
“Hey Frank, it’s your turn to go up and sweep off the roof.”
Dark. Sorry. But what do you expect, given the tableau d’morte I had just witnessed?
Then, I considered the other posthumous rites and practices we encounter. Chances are that you, like me, have attended the open-casket funeral where the deceased loved one lies there, a waxen, plastic facsimile of the person you knew and loved. Other times, the coffin holds someone who merely looks peacefully asleep.
Then we bury. And erect a monument, or at least plant a flat marker. And a vast city of the dead … and their living attendants … spreads out below the trees, surrounded on all sides by life. I haven’t been to my parents’ graves up in Sault Ste. Marie since we buried my Mom a few years back. So many graves, unvisited, unacknowledged, although not necessarily forgotten.
So, what do you want them to do with you? When the time comes. When you have to be dealt with.
I think of the options: ashes scattered in the Scottish Highlands, or across the waves of Lake Superior or the Irish Sea (brrrr!); a dignified, imposing granite block marking my resting place in a lonesome bone yard somewhere; a Reebok shoebox containing my ashes surreptitiously buried in the woods by a trout stream. My wife Jane wants a large statue of Venus rising from the waves on a half-shell, but no grave to go with it. Do you want to be embalmed or “go green”? Do you want a sealed, steel casket (funeral director will say how this will “protect” the remains in perpetuity, i.e. forever) or in a plain wooden variety?
Old lyric:
The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
The ones that go in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry
Do you think you deserve or need that 4×8 piece of real estate? Do you want to be “preserved”? Do you want to go out in a flash of super-heat, maybe wee bits up the ol’ chimney and down for rooftop repose or to infiltrate some biker’s nose? And what music do you want played at your funeral. I’ll insist on “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
What do you want them to do with you? And why?
