{"id":2881,"date":"2010-03-07T20:30:56","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T20:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2010-03-07T21:06:42","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T21:06:42","slug":"difficult-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2881","title":{"rendered":"Difficult decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know I’ve been quiet lately, and here’s the reason…<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve spent the last few days mulling a very difficult issue, spent so much time thinking about it that at times my brain felt as if it had a reduced operating capability, while a portion of my mental RAM was allocated to this other task.<\/p>\n

Burial or cremation?<\/p>\n

Having to decide which – and having to decide which of these for someone else – is more difficult than I had thought.<\/p>\n

They’re both so… final, which, given the circumstances, is good, but there’s the almost aesthetic principles to weigh up.<\/p>\n

The decision has to fit the person, if you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

And that’s so… hard to reconcile.<\/p>\n

Because we never really know – not 100% really and truly – another person, do we?<\/p>\n

We all have the capacity to surprise – and be surprised by – someone else.<\/p>\n

Even if that someone else was your own mother.<\/p>\n

You can’t tell me that you *really* know someone, to the point of knowing what he or she wants all the time, no matter how long you’ve known them; I’m not sure I would believe it, not believe it would be so *all* of the time.<\/p>\n

So, burial or cremation?<\/p>\n

It hasn’t been easy, but yesterday afternoon I decided that cremation would be more appropriate.<\/p>\n

However, imagine how I felt when I rang the undertaker to tell them my decision, only to be told that she actually had to be dead first?<\/p>\n

I am completely gobsmacked.<\/p>\n

[p.s. I’m sorry if this offended you. It did shock Sophie, but I tried to explain that it was just my sense of humour being let out for a ramble. There’s no real malice here, it’s just a piece for inclusion in my short story anthology]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know I’ve been quiet lately, and here’s the reason… I’ve spent the last few days mulling a very difficult issue, spent so much time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}