Ashes to Ashes

Dear Alice,

If you are reading this letter,

then I am already gone.

Until the day of my death,

this letter will sit

in a safety deposit box

with my will and the title to my car

and a $15 savings bond

my grandmother gave me

for my ninth birthday,

which I never cashed in.

I am writing you this letter

to express to you

what a good friend you’ve been

all these years

and how much I appreciate

that you have always been there

in good times and bad.

You are a wonderful listener

and always made me laugh,

and you are the keeper of all my secrets,

except one.

Now, Alice, after my death,

I am going to tell you my final secret.

The problem is,

I don’t think you’re going

to like it very much.

You were vacationing

in the Bahamas with Mark.

Remember him?

It was a good thing

you didn’t marry him.

Anyway, I was housesitting,

and I collected your mail

and fed your dog

and watered your plants,

but while you were away,

there was a bit of an accident.

I’ve always been terrified of spiders,

as you well know,

and you were always giving me fake spiders

and sending me pictures of spiders as “jokes,”

and it always really pissed me off,

but that’s not the secret.

I saw a spider in your home,

a really big black one,

with whisker-thin long legs,

climbing the wall just next to your mantel,

above the faux fireplace,

and with shaking hands,

I aimed at it with one of your slippers,

and it jumped, Alice—

it actually jumped,

jumped about two feet to the right,

and I could not spend another minute

in a house with a jumping spider.

Do you know how far that is,

for such a little thing to jump?

It would be like me leaping

from one side to the Grand Canyon

to the other.

So I paused, wanted to give it

a false sense of security,

and attacked again,

except my aim was not true,

and I wound up sliding a bit

on your hardwood floor,

and I knocked over the urn

containing your father’s ashes.

They exploded in an enormous gray cloud

that choked my lungs and made my eyes sting

and slowly drifted to the floor.

I swept up what I could,

and put it back into the urn,

but you know,

you never really sweep up everything.

And I didn’t think it was likely,

that you often looked inside the urn,

but I was paranoid that what I had collected

didn’t look like enough.

So just in case,

I ran out to your patio

and filled the urn with some ashes

from your charcoal grill.

And I always felt such shame,

but I could never tell you.

I liked your father a lot too!

But I don’t think you ever really noticed,

Or if you did, you never said anything,

and thank goodness the urn didn’t break, right?

And really, what is the point

of keeping a person’s ashes, anyway?

There isn't really anything to do with them.

They just sit there,

and I’m sure your father is always with you

in spirit,

whether you possess his cremains

or some soot from a Weber grill.

So now that I’ve told you,

I hope that you’re not too angry.

I want to try to make it up to you.

So, here’s that $15 savings bond,

enclosed in this letter.

Last time I checked,

it was worth about $13.48.

I’m also going to leave you

that necklace that you borrowed

and never gave back.

And I’m leaving you my ashes,

for you to remember me by.

Love always,

Carol