My curbside funeral home pickup: shouldn’t retrieval of dad’s ashes be at least as friendly as picking up wings and fries?

At the funeral home, mine is the only car in the parking lot, other than three shiny black Lincolns in the corner. It is a beautiful, bright-blue-sky day in late May, one of those spring days when people remark that the trees didn't have leaves yesterday, but today they do. Like a miracle of nature, the greenery and magnolias are exploding before my eyes. I've driven here alone, straight from my home office, glad to be out in the sunshine and marvelling at how well I'm doing.