Mark and I had some date time today. There's been a lot of illness in our house lately, and we are exhausted, but had a lovely time pottering around and actually holding hands! It's not often our hands are free to do that. We found ourselves wandering through a churchyard, commenting on how old we're getting, and looking at a few listing headstones, the memorial of lives cherished long ago. Nearby was a garden of remembrance.
"After you've had me cremated, don't stick my ashes in one of those square hole things, will you?" I directed him, probably too nonchalantly. He already knows my preference for cremation over burial, which besides being a cost thing (hey, I love a bargain and hate wasting money), is to do with my passionate desire for there to be no physical memorial place: the notion of our girls or indeed anyone visiting my grave and thinking they're visiting ME horrifies me. I will not be there. Don't visit the place where my earthly tent was hygienically disposed of trying to find a connection with me; I'll be long gone, enjoying the best party ever. Remember me by living life to the full. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that Mark wasn't going to compromise on the physical memorial bit. I needn't have worried.
"No! We'll scatter them somewhere."
"But where? I don't really like outdoors, so it'd be a bit fake to scatter them in the countryside somewhere. And it's not really the done thing to chuck them about in Costa Coffee."
"Hmm. Maybe we could leave a few ashes behind on a saucer in each of the coffee shops you've got loyalty cards for. That should work. Your purse is rammed with them."
It's true: it doesn't zip up anymore and I have to hold them all in with an elastic hair band. Sounds like it might be a plan. We had a chuckle, and carried on, hand in hand.
