The topic came up when we drove past a beautifully landscaped cemetery. “How would you like to spend eternity there?” H.E. asked.

I shrugged and made a face. “So long as during the part of eternity I’m spending there, I’m dead.”

H.E. laughed. “Are you trying to do a Woody Allen?”

“Woody Allen? What did he say?”

“I don’t know. Something like, ‘I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.'”

“Hell, yeah. I wouldn’t want to be there either.”

“Do you want to be buried or cremated?”

“What does it matter? I’ll be dead. I don’t think it’ll matter to me either way. Whichever’s cheapest, I guess.”

“That would be cremation.”

“Fine. I’ll be cremated.”

“You don’t want a headstone and a plot? What if I wanted to bring the two Japanese girls by and leave you flowers?” H.E. always jokes about the two Japanese girls. When I’m not around, he has them come by, and they give him foot rubs. He calls them Left and Right.

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever you or the girls want. But I suppose I could be cremated and still have a headstone somewhere. They’re just ashes anyway. You can do what you want with them.”

“What if I wanted to take all of your ashes and have them made into a pumice stone to use in the shower?”

“Wouldn’t that fall apart?”

H.E. laughed and shook his head. “You always do that.”

“What?”

“I’ll say something totally off the wall, and you’ll make it even more off the wall by adding some kind of qualifier to it.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Yes, you do. I’ll say something like, ‘I need to drive through an elephant’s rectum in a Volvo,’ and you’ll say something like, ‘But is that going to fit?'”

I pulled back a little to look at him strangely, with an eyebrow arched. “Nuh-uh,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

I stared at him a while longer, before I finally leaned back in my seat with a sigh, defeated. Truth be told, he had me at “elephant’s rectum.”

I could totally spend eternity having conversations like this.

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