Smoke My Body

My husband says some outrageous things to the kids, many of which have been documented in this blog. It’s not that he’s going for shock value, he shoots from the hip and hopes for the best and many times, he truly believes that his candor and colorful vocabulary are actually preparing them for the real world. This latest instance, was not, I think, one of those times.

We were getting ready for bed and Natalie was looking at pictures on my phone. She found a picture of my grandfather, Benito, who passed away when I was in junior high. Natalie has always had a bizarre fascination with death so telling her about Tatay Benito opened up a flood of questions. As we talked about death, dying, heaven, hell and if it hurts when someone dies, Paul looked up from playing Sodoku on his IPod Touch and said, “Hey kids, when I die, I want you to cremate me, then divide the ashes between you. When you do something big, like win the Superbowl or somethin’, I want you to sprinkle some of my ashes in the end zone. Whatever you have left, I want you to smoke. It’s what the Indians used to do.”

Even the kids knew that Paul had just gone to crazy town. Max looked at me, to Paul, back to me again and nervously smiled. Natalie grinned and started to giggle, preparing the next round of questions on how exactly to smoke his ashes. Aidan looked up and said, “What’s smoke?” Paulina asked for more apple juice.

I don’t know how the kids will remember this conversation, or if it will ever come up again. I asked Paul about it later. “You weren’t serious, were you?” “Yes, I am,” he replied, “And if you’re still alive, I want you to smoke me too.”