Tin can

Never let them give the ashes back.
Never tuck the corpse into your pocket–
leftovers tinned, or hair inside a locket.

When my sister’s dog died, I had only one bit of advice–don’t get the ashes back.

When we picked up our beloved Tuffy’s ashes, we found that he would have fit inside a soup can. No matter how many movies I had seen with people carting around urn of Uncle Vernon, I wasn’t ready for a life to shrink to Cream of Chicken. The tin had flowers on it, of course, but I suppose Tuffy would have preferred the chicken anyway.

He’s been dead for a couple of years. Why am I thinking of this now? Murder will out, I suppose, and that cat killed something inside me for a while–optimism.