Tonight I wrapped a young brown thrasher in a Target bag and gently set it in the dumpster next to my five-year-old's battered, straw cowboy hat. I refused to give the act meaning but I couldn't help imagining a touching service in which we all gathered around the Japanese Maple in the front yard, sang a few spirituals and buried the near weightless mass of feathers nestled inside the matching brown cowboy hat.I imagine the bird and the hat were hatched at practically the same time. Reeves birthday was several weeks ago and since shredding the box in which the hat arrived he has worn it every day. He's worn it to play croquet as well as cowboy and last Saturday he wore it to the county fishing lake with his pirate sandals and Spiderman shirt. Today he decided that the hole worn through the back was the final insult to the hole worn through the front and he let it go without curse or complaint.
So here I am at what must be a rare juncture in an artist's life when Tinkerbell carries as much weight and social significance as Baudelaire. My children, victims of late parents (late to parenthood), have rallied around death enough. They can afford to be spared another opportunity.
On Thursday, our lucky and briefly loved cowboy hat and our tiny, less fortunate visitor will travel together through the streets of our clean and lovely town. Together the hat and the bird will find their way to a dump on the outskirts of the county, past the fishing lake and past abandoned barns and airstreams.
That's if Daddy and I don't wake again at 3am, ghost-poets in a painted ranch, and dig past the remnants of dinner to salvage a funeral from a can full of meaning after all.
