Ashes

My gram wanted to be cremated. That’s not the normal thing in my family, but I was not surprised when I heard it. She felt alien in the body she had in the end, in the past 10 to 20 years. She always told me how hard it was to grow old, even though she did it gracefully: the physical indignities, the lack of privacy, the fatigue, the slow diminishing of the body. My gram was a very glamorous woman when she was younger. She was beautiful in old age also, but she couldn’t see it. I don’t blame her.
Beauty is hard to possess, because it is lost. Her old age body had to go.
Photo above is me in her mink stole, which she gave me before she died. I wore it in a performance piece last weekend. It cause big stir, intended, of course. Somewhere I think my gram was cheering me on.