My mother may have a bit of a hermitic streak (I had to get it from somewhere), but in some ways she is a very social animal. She’d had a lot to say every time I popped in to the office over the last few days. The effects of keeping mostly to her room and not having lots of chatty neighbors just across the hall were starting to show. Either that or she was drinking way too much coffee. Possibly both.

She also had about a million boxes and bags that she wanted loaded into the RV in a way that would make it easier for her to stow everything away. So we lined up, she pointed at our assigned box/bag/pile of folded things, we took it out to the RV and returned for our next assignment.

“OK, you can take that one but be careful. I put your dad’s balls in there.”

We froze. We looked at the boxes. We looked at each other. My poor long-suffering spouse, who happened to be holding the box in question, looked like he was trying not to snicker or pass out simultaneously. We slowly turned back and looked at mom.

“What?” she asked.

I don’t know about other countries or cultures, but as a general rule we don’t handle death particularly well here. There’s this weird thing that happens after someone dies. Suddenly everyone seems to develop a fear of talking about them, or saying their name, or mentioning anything that could remind the people who loved them that they ever existed. Well-meaning friends tiptoe around the subject as if the bereaved might have completely forgotten that this person they love died and would only be reminded of their loss if someone accidentally brought it up in conversation, at which point they would be plunged into inconsolable, hysterical grief.

Immediate family is not immune to this weirdness. Had mom said anything of the sort while dad was alive, we would all have immediately burst into unapologetically juvenile laughter. But there we were, not sure whether laughing would upset her or be somehow offensive. Then there was this odd moment when it occurred to me that this was my father and I was one of the people everyone else was tiptoeing around. How did I feel about it?

I may not have been as close to my father as I would have liked, but I knew for a fact that if he were there he would have grinned and wiggled his eyebrows and chuckled wickedly until everyone was laughing.

So I just raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the box in question. Mom followed my line of sight, then burst into laughter.

“Oh my goodness! What did I just say? I meant the glass balls – the ones with your dad’s ashes!”

We all laughed and the weirdness drained away, leaving behind a sense of relief. There was something cathartic about the humor, the naughtiness and the thought of how dad would have reacted. I could almost hear him chuckle.

However, we did decide to call them orbs from that point on.

She then moved on to art-directing the pile of stuff I was loading into the RV for her to stow away, because she wanted me to get a “good representative picture.” I told her I was pretty sure a giant pile of mostly necessary to moderately useful crap would come across as a giant pile of mostly necessary to moderately useful crap regardless of whether the “Home is Where You Park it” or the “Life is an Adventure” place mat happened to be showing. Then I told her to put her hat back on and smile, and that was that.

She’s showing signs of turning into a ‘grammer.

God help us all.