Boxes

See this box?
Plain wood. Pine, maybe. It’s been varnished.
Small. Kind of pretty.
It’s not quite a cube. A little longer than a cube. With a lid.
Looks like it’s made for jewelry. Earrings, bracelets?

It holds my cat.

She was the Buddha of cats, I’m telling you.
Most cats scratch the furniture, leave their poops in corners of the living room, refuse to be petted, deliver battered birdies and mangled mice to the front door.
My Gidget never did any of that.
When people visited, she sat with them. Sometimes sat on them, but she was polite. Never forced herself on anyone.
Her purr could comfort five people at once.

A name like Gidget, you might think she was frivolous. A ditsy sort of animal.
Not at all.
She was a serious cat. Not in a bad way. But she paid attention. She noticed things.
She noticed me.

When Gidget died, I got more sympathy notes than when my dad bought the farm.
I was gutted. Cried for days.
I didn’t cry for my dad.
Never mind.

Gidget wasn’t going to get better. I knew that. But knowing’s not the same as accepting.
After her death, they offered me a plaster imprint of her paw. As if that would mean anything.
I did want her ashes, though.

What I should’ve done, I should’ve scattered her ashes in the backyard of my house.
When I had a house.
Now I live in a high-rise.
My new home’s in a building sixteen storeys tall.
Right by the lake.
Moved here when the house became too much to care for.

What do you do with the ashes of the dear departed when you live in a high-rise?
I don’t want to scatter them in front of an audience. Waterfront’s way too busy.
Maybe I could fling Gidget’s ashes out the window? Hope they land in the lake?

I looked inside the box once. There was a small plastic pouch. Like a baggy. Inside I saw brown sand, the grains packed close together.
It occurred to me: This could be any cat’s ashes. Or a dog’s, one of those little, tiny ones, look like they’ll blow away when their owner walks them.
For all I know it’s just dirt.

Come to think of it, I live in a box too. My apartment. It’s a chain of boxes, really, one behind the other. Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, study.
I live in one set of boxes. Others in this building live—by ones and twos and sometimes threes if there’s a pet—in their own boxed sets.

Most of us in the building are old. We’re geezers.
They say people come to this town to retire. I say, they come here to die.

One good thing about this building: It’s right next door to an old people’s home.
All right, an “institution for seniors.” A “retirement residence.”
My landlord told me, “You reach a stage where you can’t fend for yourself, you don’t have to go far away.
Just move right next door to the Happy Trails Eldercare.”
I could string a zipline, my apartment to Happy Trails, and just slide on in.
From there, it’s not all that far from Happy Trails to the hospital. And from there to the morgue. In a box.

Friend of mine was dying in the city hospital. She hoped to donate her body to science. “Science” happens at the university. Anatomy Department. Just a block from where she was dying.
But the scientists, they told her it’ll cost a thousand bucks to transport your body from the hospital to the Anatomy Department.
She couldn’t believe it.
Her old man said, “Hell, when she’s dead I’ll just put her in the back of my truck, drive her body over there myself.”
Not far to travel. Glorious advantage of living in this town.
Lots of boxes, all close together.

Lots of deaths here too.
I read the obituaries. Which are also in boxes. To separate one person from another.
Wouldn’t want a pillar of the cathedral congregation to rub up against a waiter from the greasy spoon.
That’s the thing about this place. People keep to their boxes. From birth to death.

But no one dies in those death notices.
No. They “pass.”
They pass what? We need a noun here, people. You can’t just pass.
Unless you “passed”—like in school.
Not what they mean.
Passed gas? Does that happen when a geezer dies?
Or passed someone else? Like in a competition. Is there a race to the cemetery? Each in their box?
Or they pass away. Away where?

Then there’s the In Memoriams.
Another set of boxes.
Ever notice that people speak to corpses in those things? Or try to.
Here’s one:
“Your memory we treasure. Loving you always, Forgetting you never.”
Charming sentiment.

Just what do they think happens then?
Imagine I’m a dead person. I’m sitting on a cloud up in the sky. Or maybe I’m in some sort of purgatory. Or hell.
I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. And I think, wonder if my dear family is still thinking of me. Hope they haven’t forgotten.
Guess I’ll take a look in the good ol’ newspaper, see if my loved ones have written to me.
Oh good. Here’s a box. It’s addressed to me.
“We think of you in silence
We always speak your name.”
That’s a damn contradiction, right there.
“We have a thousand memories
And your picture in a frame.
Your memory is our keepsake
With which we’ll never part.
God has you in his keeping
We have you in our hearts.”
Really, what do people expect? The dead will read these things? Maybe they’ll write back? From their heavenly—or hellacious—boxes?

I don’t think Gidget passed. I think she died.
I won’t be sending her a message in the newspaper.
Smart as she was, I doubt she would read it.

When I think of Gidget, I imagine her reincarnated.
Will she be a cat again? Or something else?
I want to meet her if I get another life.

Buddhism says when a soul is reborn as an animal, it’s because of the soul’s wrongdoings.
I don’t believe it. Gidget never hurt anybody.
Buddhism says animals are beneath humans. Gidget made me think some animals are better than people.

So, what should I do with her ashes?
In this big box where I live now, there’s all kinds of limits on how you get rid of stuff.
“Compost should be left in the compost container.”
“Use the recycling bins in the basement for paper, cans, plastics, and cardboard.”
“All rubbish placed in the garbage chute must be carefully wrapped.”

What are ashes? I mean, what exactly are they?
Gidget was alive. Full of life. So, is she now compost?
Or maybe she’d like to be recycled. In the spirit of nine lives and all.
I know one thing: She’s not garbage.

I think I’ll just keep her with me in her box.
Just like I’m staying in my box.
At least until I have to move to the next one.