I was driving by a cemetery and thought why bother? I must advise them to make me into ashes.
I stopped at a red light. It was at a corner of the cemetery. On the rear window of a local family van was written the name of a boy. They had also written his birth day and the day of his death. They wrote about how they missed him. They ended the note by telling us of their love for him.
I would doubt the boy was now ashes. I could make a case for remembrance not dependent on a gravestone if he was now ashes and this message was in lieu of that gravestone. The message could be a carrying on of their vivid memory of him. So that really the note was about them. Perhaps it was denial. As if he could drive up behind the van and read about himself. It was as little likely that he could read this own obituary. Was this their obit for him? Could it be there was no desire to publish in the newspaper?
Most likely they had more to say but the size of the van window, and the need to make the lettering large enough to be read, left not much room for more words. Was it an advertisement? It was informing me so that I would ask a question? Talking about him to strangers could make the pain they felt lessen somewhat?
Other messages I have seen, as bumper stickers, were about how proud the parents were that their child had made the honor roll. It is a wonder many more stickers are not affixed to bumpers proclaiming the other achievements of children, a wife, a husband, or a friend, and so on. These stickers could have gotten large and obnoxious - boastful, we once called it. In bad taste, some once said. So with our age of thousands of irrepressible jerks sending messages to us, I repeat, why haven’t bumper stickers of such a faulty nature not become commonplace? May be there are laws.
Then for rear windows of vans the laws may not apply. I read it. So what am I to do about it? Do I acknowledge it with no action taken? A stroll through a graveyard would bring as meaningful an acknowledgement? My reaction slipped into resentment. Why? Must I know of his death? Haven’t I enough beside-the-point knowledge already? Why not list the grave site? I could visit, pay my respects. I am sad he is gone. He was one of us. Every one of us has an end. It is a question of timing. We don’t die all at once, together. A great many of us can die at one time but then something is wrong. I am not implying that the death of the boy was appropriate and satisfactory.
Lacking in satisfaction, Ralph Waldo Emerson dug up his dead boy. Lacking in appropriateness, they name buildings in honor of those still living. Couldn’t I write a short series of phrases about myself for my car’s rear window? It wouldn’t yet be about my death. It could be a pithy weekly report. Would anyone read it? Must they be a captive audience at a stop light? Would they paint out my messages if they could? If enough people did as I did, spray paint cans in the front seat of most cars would become de rigueur.
Of course, my death will not be news to me. The digging, naming, and spraying are only as effective as the living, us, can make them. The shovel, the plaque, and the paint will break, fall, and erode.