My father's cremation was not well attended. A very modest turn out, the few people there wanting to remain anonymous. A few cursory nods in my direction, bowed heads and dark suits. He had requested no eulogies, no hymns; his only nod to tradition being one song - and contrary to tradition, it was Tom Lehrer's "We Will All Go Together When We Go". I didn't turn around to see, but I did feel the wry smiles of the few gathered.
The lyrics are interesting, to say the least, primarily reminding the listener that the feelings that they voice at a funeral won't be voiced for them -
"For when the bombs that drop on you
get your friends and neighbours too,
there'll be nobody left behind to grieve."
After the minimal service, I walked in the gardens, relishing the grass beneath my feet - not an unfamiliar feeling, but brought into sharp focus by the few minutes of song. I gazed upon the distant city, my mind wandered to a future memory - buildings half demolished, the giant glass monoliths having been blown on a harsh wind; the remnants of fires, their thin black threads rising to a sky drawn dark with a deadly shroud, most of the fuel having long since burnt; decaying monuments to a shortsighted people, soon to return to the earth from which their raw materials were mined.
We are just dust - all the atoms in each molecule in each cell come from the soil, and in the end that is where we will return.
I didn't take note of how long I spent there, all I remember is that I looked back to the crematorium as I opened my car door, and saw the thin black thread slowly rising up.