the corner office

Ronwen and I went down to visit my folks this evening. The conversation went to the issue of funerals and the fact that almost everyone wants to be cremated these days, and what people want to happen after they're gone. My mom and stepdad both want their ashes to go to the farm in Dundee. I've never been there but apparently it's a beautiful place. I knew we were into morbid territory when my mom started talking about "sprinkle me by the willow trees where all the ducks used to be." My grandmother, who's also quite elderly, and has given us a few scares in the last 2 years, told my aunt recently that when her time comes she wants her ashes scattered at the Pietermaritzburg Botanical Gardens because that's where her happiest and most peaceful times were. That's where my sister and I, and our two cousins, used to go with my gran every Saturday afternoon when we were children living in 'Maritzburg. My mom telling me that tonight brought a lump to my throat.

Ronwen says she'd want her ashes scattered in the Drakensberg somewhere. The sad thing is, I don't think I have any special place I'd want to be scattered. Haunts from my youth would feel like cheating, somehow. More accurately then, I can't think of any place I've been to or grown so attached to recently, that I'd want someone to up-end my urn there. When I think about how far back "recently" stretches, I realise the extent to which my adulthood has been a blur, too much in a state of flux always for me to pick one place and say "this is the spot."

So I'm currently Without Designated Final Resting Place. Is this a bad thing? Or is it a very firm affirmation that I'm nowhere near ready to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet?

I think I'll go with the latter.