Near Death Experience with Wife and Adult Daughter
A poem by Lynn Kozlowski

Near Death Experience with Wife and Adult Daughter

Our deaths—my wife’s and mine–are at issue.
Our lawyer has forms for particulars:
What we would have done with us–
our wishes for disposal to be fulfilled.

Our daughter is prepared to take charge
and eager to have the sorting of it done–
whatever we want done, she says,
will be her assignment to do.

She has an eager sense of ‘just so’ about it,
as if she is planning her first wedding.
She recommends for us a natural,
un-embalmed passing, if the laws will allow.

She could perhaps find a place, she says,
if we would like that. She says that, for herself,
she hopes such organic decomposition
will be commonplace and encouraged.

She has thought about this for herself
and for the good of the planet.
My wife is of a like mind. None of us
feels constrained by the rules of a religion.

I hate any thought of plans for my remains,
as disquieting to me as staring into the night sky
impossibly deep with stars. I can imagine only
an event with colleagues speaking, if any survive.

This consideration of details is over as surely
as my avoidance of deep space.
Nothing decided. Still up in the air. For me
still a carte blanche. Still a predicament.

About the Author:

Lynn Kozlowski’s writing has appeared in such places as The Quarterly, The Malahat Review, pif magazine, and failbetter.com. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers.

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