OCR Text |
Show 140 They inserted the body, hit a red button and the body burned. Then they hit another button and the burning stopped. Then they hit a button and it burned again, to be sure. When Laura told me this story I pictured a stack of organs lying next to Blake's body, and for some reason it wasn't a disturbing image, as if some part of Blake would live on as long as those organs were functioning. I found Laura in the kitchen and she asked me if I was all right. I said yes without thinking about the question. Darwin the cat jumped on the table. I decided this was as good a time as any to ask if she knew, specifically, where pieces of Blake's body had gone. Laura drank her coffee and said, "I'm not sure about that." Another sip. "This is what I have left of him." She walked to the cupboard and pulled out a plastic container that looked like it might have held sugar. She opened it up and I saw Blake's ashes inside. The correct term is cremains, I guess, but the inside of that sugar jar did look exactly like the ashes in a fire pit; bigger pieces of bone looked like the rocks that would turn white in the heat but not bum. "How much can they reuse?" "Well, I know they can't use tattooed skin," she said. Then she scooped some of Blake's ashes into a plastic Ziploc bag for me. She told me that Blake's tattoo artist said he could mix the ashes into tattoo ink and give her a tattoo if she wanted. She was going to get a railroad spike homage tattooed on her ankle next week. |