Requiem in Brass

Just got home from another lovely wedding, so I'm scurrying to get my Saturday Centus on the books. Ms. Jenny has generously offered 150 words this time around, which means my word count is right on target today. (I seem to manage that more easily with prose than poetry.) As always, the prompt is in red.

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Requiem in Brass

©2011 Susan Noyes Anderson

“If I die young, I wanna be buried the old-fashioned way,” Cynthia said, “with a wake that goes on forever and a passel of mourners, boo-hooing like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget the jazz band funeral procession,” was his cheerful reply. “Hey, if ya gotta go, you might as well do it in style.”

“Makes sense to me,” she beamed. “But make sure it’s the real thing. I’ve always wanted to visit New Orleans anyway.”

John knew she’d been kidding…They’d been kidding…But wasn’t there an element of truth in all humor? Especially black humor, and that humor had been blacker than either of them imagined. Now, absent any other indication of his wife’s wishes, here he was in the French Quarter, carrying a surprisingly heavy urn behind an assortment of trumpets and saxophones, wishing it weren’t 110 dripping degrees.

The wake? Lengthy. The mourners? Numerous and tearful.

(Check, check, and check.)

But small consolation.

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