8:11) Hope O'Keeffe 02-SEP-97 14:25

The gravestone had waited for thirty years: McLaughlin John F. 1893- 1967 Gladys E. 1903 -

At the end she'd said she wanted to be buried with her parents instead. And then with both her parents and her husband. "You can't do both," they told her, "unless you're cremated." "Oh, how wonderful. I can be scattered to the winds." Or, more precisely, "scattuhed."

No Waikiki seas for Gladys -- just the box with Dad in St. Joseph's Cemetary (the stone filled in at last, 1903-1997), a bit under geraniums with her parents, a spoonful sprinkled over the Wishing Rock at 41 Addington Road (the room above the porch haunted, the present dwellers tell us, in the house that is always home in our dreams), a thimbleful on White Horse Beach, a pinch or two set aside for whenever her Mt. Shasta calls.

And as we spread her dust, we brought our own to her, small baggies of dirt from our scattuhed homes, emptied into the grave. And, of course, a handful of M&Ms for Dad.