Fiction Friday #2: Immortal Remains
At the end of the road, Kara has one final choice to make.
It only took a terminal prognosis for Kara to enjoy her commute. Stage four liver cancer vanquished her road rage and quelled the urge to speed through yellow lights. For the salaried workers white-knuckling their way through traffic, the pedestrians dashing into the road between parked cars, the parents hauling a minivan’s worth of screaming children to school, she felt a budding and overwhelming sense of kinship. How quickly it all speeds by. How human, to finally cherish the journey when the destination is in sight.
Kara was dabbing at her eyes when the front wheels of her car took a sudden dip, followed by the sickening scrape of metal undercarriage on asphalt. Distracted, she had driven straight into the infamous South Street pothole. After several months and hundreds of constituent complaints to the City, that monstrosity was still ruining shocks and screwing wheel alignments.
“Damn it!”
Pre-cancer Kara was back at the wheel. Her phone buzzed as she hit the next red light. She swiped right and jabbed the speaker icon.
“Mrs. Minami,” came a bright voice. “It’s Jo! Jo Marvin, with Lasting Light. Did you have a chance to look through the catalog?”
“Oh, um, not yet. Can I give you a call later tonight?”
“Of course, ma’am. It’s overwhelming, I know,” Jo Marvin chirped from the cupholder. “But anything carbon-based is probably doable. We’re here to make your vision an eternity.”
Forty minutes later, in a lull between meetings, Kara swiveled in her office chair. She clicked on the link sent by Jo, her “Legacy Liaison”. A company website popped up.
Sepia portraits of bernedoodles and white people in their mid-seventies walking along a beach.
Scroll.
Floating carbon-silicon microchips with 100 terabytes of storage for photos and audio files.
Scroll.
3D-printed sculptures and painted landscapes.
Scroll.
Diamond pendants and jewel-encrusted watches.
A million and one different forms of showboating and clinging-on, she thought. None of them appealed to her. Even traditional options like ceramic dishware or vinyl records felt like vanity projects. Her late mother had chosen to go with a classic leatherbound edition of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre— a fitting choice for the quiet woman with an independent mind.
“The final expression of self” people called it. When Kara was reduced to a cluster of carbon atoms, which object would embody her? A book, like her mother? She was not much of a reader. A romantic totem like her father, the tasseled bookmark tucked inside of Jane Eyre? Kara was three years divorced, and unattached. A diamond? She’d never worn one.
The reason this was so difficult, Kara ruminated, was that she still had an attic’s worth of junk from her parents and she couldn’t bear the thought that one day soon, she might be the clutter that loomed over someone else’s head. Fancy marketing aside, these options were only expensive forms of baggage for Evan and Cole, her teenage sons. Wear me. Listen to me. Put me on display. She would not impose on her sons, who would already be grieving. Kara did not need an eternal legacy, she needed to be useful, even now.
Closing the window of Lasting Light’s product page, she dialed Jo Marvin.
“Hi. I’d like to go with something off-catalog.”
It was a short commute from the home of Evan and Cole’s father to the Montgomery County Cemetery, where they would stand over an empty coffin and reflect on their mother’s life. Evan, her eldest son, would give the eulogy. The coffin would be for symbolic purposes only; the body, of course, had been delivered to Lasting Light’s regional facility for processing the day Kara passed.
Evan considered which stories to share about his mother. He wouldn’t wax on about her enduring faith or boundless imagination. Kara Minami had possessed neither of those qualities— for all of her forty-seven years, and even in the face of a grisly and expeditious death, she had been a fierce pragmatist— and he loved her for it. A tear trickled down Evan’s cheek as the car turned down South Street and glided smoothly across the newly paved road.
Oof this one was surprisingly heart wrenching!!
Loved this! Very clever, indeed!!