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My aunt put my grandfather's ashes in the front yard like he wanted. She bought the house from him earlier and still lived there. She told me one day she looked out the picture window at the front yard and didn't know whether to laugh or be mortified, but ants had decided to build an entire colony out of his ashes, there they were even with tiny bone fragments working away. I told her it was typical of our family - 'why live somewhere when you can own the whole damn town.'
I always promised my nephew James that I would give him $1 for every year he was for his birthday. I would be very creative about the way he'd get though I never just put it in a card and mailed it. One year, can't remember why, but I didn't have the cash on me and had this silver hinged Chinese fortune cookie and I put, I think 13 pennies inside of it, and hid it in the bottom of a carton of fortune cookies I got at the restaurant. His objective was to find a fountain and make 13 wishes. My brother decided to make a whole father son day of it and took him to where he went to college and showed him around and these fountains and they'd stop and take pictures of him tossing these pennies in the fountains. My SIL said it was the best birthday he ever had they had a really good day.
James died this past Thanksgiving and (I NEVER carry cash) ever since I've been finding these pennies in really odd places, back of the closet, in a shoe, on the floor, on my driveway, in the supermarket aisle, I even dug one up in the garden this year. I always know I'll get one, I just wonder where I'll find it. It makes me laugh and I remember saying outloud once, "Send me the gosh darn lottery numbers and stop with the G-D pennies already." Well, I think he's sending me the lottery, but just one penny at a time because the oddest thing happened. I was actually on my way to a dealership to trade in my car and get a new one. In the process the driver's side tire and all the lug nuts went flying off the car and over 5 lanes of traffic and I turned the car hard enough for it to drop just making it off the road and in the driveway to this gas station. I immediately got out and ran after the tire so I wouldn't cause and accident. I got back to the car and what was sitting on the front driver's seat? Why a brand new shiny penny of course and of all things, it was dated the year of his birth.
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