Danielle Will Be So Proud

I promised Danielle that I would bury her if she died first. She did die first, on a fair day in August, and though I loved her as much as the next guy whose wife puts an end to 40 years of pretty good marriage by dying, rather than lapse into sorrow, my first thought after she passed was whether or not to keep my promise and bury her.

On the one hand, I was someone who had a reputation for reliability. On the other hand, she would never be able to judge my reliability on this subject. Also there were the non-negligible costs associated with burial. If she were alive, even horribly disfigured, say, by a gas explosion caused by a careless disregard for the danger of leaving the gas turned on while the stove was unlit, or maimed during an encounter with an angry grizzly bear on some ill-advised hike in the Yellowstone backcountry, or just simply suffered from an incapacitating stroke due to decades of questionable eating habits, having avoided legumes like they were poison. Well in those cases I’d happily pay the cost of the best care available! But, sadly, she was dead and therefore in no position to express appreciation for any largesse on my part.

Was I, as many of her friends and family members silently believed, a cretinous, hard-hearted, tight-fisted cynic? Or was the reality a little more more complicated than that? Was my pragmatic approach an expression of a holistic concern for the environment and responsible land-use decisions. Cemeteries, one could reasonably argue, are indulgences of the heedless rich, who don’t consider the ecological harm of the lower population density which cemeteries demand of their communities.

When Danielle was alive we would have bracing arguments about greenhouse gases and global warming and how to live our lives in such a world, and sometimes, about the benefits of legumes. When Danielle asked inquisitively if I would enjoy eating lentils alone for a week while she went to Yellowstone to have a little fun without me, I said “Danielle, after careful thought, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that vacations are responsible for a significant percentage of global warming.”

An airplane ride from San Francisco to Bozeman, Montana, which is the closest airport to Yellowstone, with its angry bear population, adds about 650 pounds of carbon dioxide, per person, into the atmosphere. My recommendation to Danielle was that we enjoy staycations, playing pickleball and completing jigsaw puzzles, perhaps injecting some excitement into the day by making a homemade vegan carbonara sauce or baking an herbed loaf of sourdough.

Danielle became quite exercised during one such debate. I believe she said her family and friends were on the money when they told her she was married to a cretinous, hard-hearted, tight-fisted cynic. In her frustration with my civic-mindedness, she turned off the water and gas mains to our house and then turned off all the circuit breakers, while proclaiming that I was right, we should spare the environment by leaving no footprint upon the Earth.

Later I turned all the utilities back on, but by then I’d forgotten all about the five pounds of lentils I’d been simmering for that week’s dinners, and had never turned the range’s gas off during Danielle’s tantrum. Danielle was so peeved with me that she declined to go on our usual neighborhood constitutional, saying that she would be exhaling too much carbon dioxide from the exertion of the walk, and that she didn’t want to add to global warming.

While I was walking alone through the lovely graveyard near our house, something caused a spark at home and the resulting explosion consumed everything in our house including Danielle. Everything was charred, carbonized to a black powder so fine I thought I might have been able to use it to purify the water in my grey water system, had my grey water system not melted during the conflagration.

I had a decision to make: bury Danielle’s unrecognizable body, or have her cremated, which, I thought, would really be a coals to Newcastle type situation. Actually, I thought, that settles it, she has already been mostly naturally cremated, the decision has been made by fate. And how tidy was it, I reflected, that fate’s instrument was the simmering of Danielle’s least favorite legume. But what was more important to me than tidiness was that I didn’t need to break my promise, as being a man of principle is important to me.

I felt a sense of peace as I called the cemetery to ask for a refund on the plot that Danielle had purchased after we’d had the fifth or sixth burning versus burying discussion. But despite my sense of peace, I felt in need of a vacation.

I’m a flexible person, willing to admit when I’m wrong, and I had a sudden realization that staycations were boring. With the refunded plot money I was able to book a 4 star hotel on Mallorca for the following week. As I boarded the airplane and found my seat in first class, I thought about how much Danielle would have enjoyed this. I even brought with me a small funerary urn with some of her ashes in

Danielle would be so proud of me!

it and placed it in a position of honor on the side table of my lie-flat seat. How proud she must be, up in heaven looking down at me, realizing that all of our arguments had not been in vain, had changed me into a better man; one who could appreciate luxury.