Time Is For Wasting

It's Memorial Day, a time for wasting. All time is time for wasting.

When we honor the dead, we're honoring time that was wasted. Their ashes, bones, remains have wasted away.

The old philosopher -- O, what's his name? -- Eddie Lawrence -- asks, "Is that what your problem is, Booby?" You got a problem? You have a problem with decorating graves? Yes, it's a waste.

Who likes to go by a graveyard and see plastic flowers and little windmills wasting good wind? I don't. Nor do I like all the trinkets, leftovers, memorials, signs with sentiments, the windmills, balloons, stemmed flowers, iron hanging posts. None of it.

I'd rather have a nice clean grave. Marked out like that, a rectangle with fading edges giving way to obscurity. Perhaps nothing at all would be better.

Anytime I try to remember dead loved ones, it doesn't help to be at their grave. And I definitely have tried. Although it is somewhat cool, once in a while, to say, "There, right there."