On the west side of my fridge, pinned by an assortment of novelty magnets, reside the obituaries and funeral announcements of various friends, family members, and others for whom circulation, by any definition, was maybe more fleeting than they had hoped.  Aside from preserving my memories of those involved, and teaching of the tenuousness of our existence, these yellowed scraps of newsprint also serve as ever-present reminders that refrigerators don’t live forever.

On my way to work pre-dawn late last week, well past the first frost, even the first snow, I rounded the corner to witness the launch of a row of sprinklers, like so many urinating drunks, wetting a patch of grass on the south side of a small equipment rental company.  Why, I wondered, was the owner trying to delay the inevitable?  No matter how much he watered, within a week the miniature lawn was going to go dormant.  I could almost see the little blades of grass wincing, doing their best to retain even a touch of color.

This bothered me, off and on, for the next couple of days.  Then, this morning, as I sat at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee I glanced over at my refrigerator and it hit me; not the refrigerator, but the reason the sprinklers had been operating long after their season.  The logic this fellow was using in his quest to keep some green on his lawn, long after mowing was necessary, was the same logic we use in putting makeup on our loved ones before we bury them!

I guess even in the plant kingdom a corpse always wants to look its best.


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