In which I plan Primo's funeral

Oh like you don't think about this sort of thing. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you don't have a "be ready for the worst possible situation" mentality as I do. I've always planned for the worst. Well, maybe not always, but not being able to find a job for almost two years when I returned from my two-year stint with the Peace Corps,* watching my otherwise healthy father be diagnosed with cancer and die within eight months,** then being laid off after eight years with my job has instilled in me a waiting for the next shoe to fall attitude. If nothing else, I am always wearing clean underwear. They will not be laughing at me in the ambulance. No sir.

Anyhow. Yes. I lie awake in bed at night thinking of what I need to do if Primo dies in a plane crash. It's always a plane crash. He doesn't drive that much, being that he works from home and all and is unlikely to die from a fall as he walks down to the basement to get the Pringles Dill Pickle potato chips he has hidden from himself. But he does fly a lot in his work travels, so a plane crash is more likely than a car crash just because he flies more. Yes. I know plane travel is statistically safer than car travel. Although have they considered how many drunk drivers there are in our state where drunk driving is the state sport?

There are the obvious things: throw away all the boxes of junk in the basement that he moved here after he split with Isabel and has not opened in ten years, with stuff like Claudia's tuition receipts. (I have opened the boxes.) Claudia is married, expecting a baby. Claudia graduated from college over ten years ago. It's safe to throw those papers away. Really.

We can also toss the calendars from 1990 that Primo saw the other day when he was moving boxes so the plumber could get to something. Primo didn't throw them away because 1. it wasn't in the scope of the move the boxes project and 2. the calendars had trains on them.

The big things: Sell this house and move back to someplace warm. I love Primo and mostly like living here but I hate the winter weather.

Then the immediate death details. Do I make Isabel file for her life insurance (part of the divorce settlement) on her own or do I do it for her, knowing that she is lazy and incompetent and just wouldn't do it?*** Do I take the high road? Oh heck I take the high road. I don't need that on my conscience. She would lose her house without the alimony payment, which of course I would not make, so she would have to have the insurance fast. I am a gossipy, spiteful person, but I am not that mean. I'll let someone else handle vengeance.

Do I have a funeral? Primo's really good friends live far from here. Do I make them travel? Yes. Yes. I think I do. We would have one heck of a wake. Have I mentioned there are over 300 bottles of wine in the basement and that I am a fabulous cook? They come here for the funeral, stay at the house, and we send Primo off in style. We mourn, but we mourn with good food and drink.

Now to the main part. Sly and Doris.

I never have to talk to them again. That's the one good thing about Primo being dead.

Well, that and I get to get all his crap out of the basement.

Primo asked if I wouldn't even send them a Christmas card.

I don't send them one now,**** but OK. I'll send them a card. Fine. If he wants me to send them a Christmas card after he is dead, I will do it.

But I don't have to talk to them. If they call, I don't have to answer the phone. If they email, I can just hit delete.

I would miss Primo so much that I wouldn't be able to stand it. We broke up once for a month and I was miserable. His death would crater me. But there would be a tiny, very thin silver lining to that enormous black cloud.



* Mind you, I had an MBA from a top-20 school with a 4.0 GPA with five years work experience at a Fortune 100 company in addition to the Peace Corps experience, so it wasn't as if I was some slacker who had spent my time in the Peace Corps getting high on nutmeg.

** He thought he'd pulled a muscle running a 10K. The good part is the cancer and my unemployment happened at the same time.

*** She didn't fight for child support even before she married Primo - when it really would have been in her financial interests.

**** Primo is in charge of his parents' birthdays, of Mother's Day, Father's Day, and of their Christmas. His parents, his responsibility.