Ah, Family

My cousin C announced to me one day that he has “Three crazy Uncle K’s.” One of these Uncle K’s is my father, Polackpappy; one is an uncle from his mother’s side of the family (we are related through his father); one is the oldest of McMumsy’s four siblings. Pp sits square in the middle of the craziness ranking; the uncle I’m not related to is number three. I tried to fight for my father to come in at number three but then I was reminded by my cousin that this is a man who once cut off his own cancerous tumor with a sailing knife and threw it in the trash. My mother's oldest brother, who once owned a Clydesdale named Fluffy, comes in at a solid number one. This story is about that uncle.

Picture it: Easter dinner, 2006. At my and my aunt Q's insistence, the cremains of Wendy, beloved family corgi, sits in a place of honor in the dry sink right next to the dinner table. Someone has put the dog's red neckerchief around the wooden box containing the cremains. That someone would be me. I actually voted for putting the box at the Babcia's feet, so that Wendy could beg for scraps from beyond the grave, but I was outvoted.

Anyhoo. We are discussing the cremains when Aunt Q pipes up “Well, Mum never approved of being cremated. Remember when Aunt Myrtle died? And we went to her wake? And Mum looked around the funeral home and then yelled ‘Oh my God! She’s in the jar!’ when she spotted the urn containing Myrtle’s ashes?” Uncle K nodded. McMumsy said that some Catholics disapproved of cremation. Uncle K nodded again and then guffawed and said “Well, isn’t it funny that she died in a fire and ended up all burnt up anyway.”