Fresh Cut Flowers

Well lets make one thing perfectly clear.

192 is not a good weight for me.

I can deal with the love handles and the special places I've learned to sweat, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy any more jeans.

Joann and I flirted with just going balls out crazy for another month to see if I could hit 200.

Just to say I did.

But 192 is far enough. So its back to diet and exercise.

Everyone's favorite.

I need to invent a cheese burger that scientifically burns calories. In fact, while I'm at it, I need to invent a cigarette that  brings more oxygen to your blood and a type of scotch that gives you better diction, makes you more attractive and brings an eloquent wit to your lame ass jokes.

I need to invent a comfortable way to read.

Until I do these things, and I will do them, I need to work on my core exercises and cut carbs like a good little fatty.

But this isn't one of those kinds of blogs.

There will be no "Before" and "After" photos and I certainly don't need any encouragement.

Putting on my shoes without breaking a sweat will be encouragement enough.

But I told you that story so I's could tell you this one:

So I'm out for a a bike ride, which is the kind of thing one does when one no longer wants to ask for help pulling a T-Shirt over one's head, and out of the corner of my eye I see a sea bright spring colors. It catches my attention because flowers are not usually fond of 100 degree weather and the field I was passing was just littered with them.

Then I remembered that I wasn't looking a pretty grass field with an easter bouquet of wild flora.

I was riding past a cemetery.

I forget sometimes how close we live to our local cemetery. Its just like one block over, but its hidden by the houses at the end of the cul-de-sac and the entrance is nearly four streets away, so its easily forgotten.

But there's a little break in the line of houses a couple of blocks over where one could snatch quite a lovely view.

If one finds cemeteries to be lovely.

And since it is Monday, all of the flowers that have been laid upon the final resting places are still aglow with their greenhouse vibrancy from the day before.

I didn't stop to observe or think much about those flowers, had to keep my heart rate up if I'm ever going to be able to enjoy a Chipotle Burrito again, but it did occur to me in the shower how beautiful it looked in retrospect.

And yet sad.

So, so, so very sad.

Cause the people who lay those flowers on those final resting places are doing so in order to celebrate lives loved lost, or to pay homage to a special connection they once had, or to find a place to let their grief be for just a while. But someday those people will find resting places of their own and those flowers will cease being laid upon those places and what once looked like a beautiful garden on a blistering hot Monday, will simply become an underground parking lot.

And then I thought about my own resting place, cause, doesn't everybody? And I found it sweetly sentimental to imagine my son putting some pretty flowers down at the foot of my grave and thinking about all those times we played catch.

And yet . . .

And yet . . .

The scene pulls out a bit and I see my grandchildren in their sunday best, tired and fidgety in the hot sun. I think about the tremendous effort it took to get the family out of the house, the whining, the complaining, the "What do you mean we have to stop at the store and gets flowers too!? Its not like WaitGrandpa even cares, he's dead.!"

(my grandchildren are real shits.)

I think about all that and it occurs to me that there might be another way to do something special to remember me.

Instead of lilies, I'm thinking my son should just take a long drag off a vitamin enriched Marlboro Light, take a big bite of a gut-be-gone double quarter cheese burger and wash it down with a brain food beer, remembering all those times I let him sit in the front seat of the car and be happy that he decided not to have children.

"Here's to you, pop." He'll say.

"Here's to you."

And he'll have to pick up flowers cause his life partner is gonna smell the booze and smoke on his breath and not be very happy about it, so the florist will not be going out of business in this future economy.

Which is good.

Nobody likes to see an out of work florist.

1 comment:

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