<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Ashes Among the Remains</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">My father responded</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Just throw them away</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">I did not nor did I cast them into<br class="">ocean or bay where we’d fished<br class="">flounder and fluke nor strew them<br class="">over the golf courses where he’d hit<br class="">multistage rockets rising from half an inch <br class="">then to a foot above fairways <br class="">to summarily explode<br class="">hundreds of yards into the future<br class="">other worldly fireworks released <br class="">by his elegantly compact fury.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Instead I left them in their box<br class="">a golden shiny tin ossuary<br class="">next to my mother’s on the top shelf <br class="">of my bedroom closet<br class="">where I did not have to make decisions<br class="">and I incidentally could visit them daily<br class="">until our house burned down<br class="">in the California wildfires<br class="">October Ninth 2017</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">I don’t intend here to dwell upon<br class="">the nightmare that fire is <br class="">I will not detail the feelings we had<br class="">as we evacuated in one of our cars<br class="">along with the family terrier and nothing else <br class="">though later we did contemplate <br class="">Dad’s and Mom’s remains further<br class="">consumed by 1500 degree flames<br class="">extending their years-earlier incineration<br class="">in an oven at the crematorium near Petaluma.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Were it not that my parents lived well into<br class="">their nineties I so sick depressed and barely 74<br class="">might feel prepared to let go of the tangible rim <br class="">to the bottomless jar of all that remains<br class="">to the what or the where or the not.</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 6px 0px 0px; display: inline; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>- Ed Coletti</p></body></html>