Tryin' To Get To Heaven

Mowed down Virgin Mary statue, not shown.

Because it's not awesome enough that I have to visit my brother in the cemetery, but whenever I am there I also get a big granite reminder that my parents, too, will be joining him, eventually.

Ray and Susie are nothing if not prepared. They've got their plot bought, their headstone engraved and in place, their funerals already paid for. This is so, "Gina, when we die, you don't have to worry about all that nonesense. You'll have enough trouble spending all of our riches." Then we laugh, hard.

The last time I visited my brother's grave there was this beat-up plastic statue of the Virgin Mary next to his plot. I winked at the Gods for this bit of amusement.

Hahaha. Of all the places for the Blessed Virgin to land, she ends up here. Does Billy even know Jesus had a mom, who was a virgin? Hahaha.

We are not a religious family. We are certainly not Hail Mary-ing Catholics. The only person I know who goes to church is my mom, and she doesn't even believe in heaven or hell. My only form of religion is buying those cool Mexican religious votive candles with Jesus and Mary and Joseph on them in the international food aisle at Bigg's.

God, I love those candles.

But there was Mary. All 5 inches of her, serene and draped in white and blue... and chewed-up looking... at my brother's grave.

Shit Billy. When you'd get all religious on me? I sniffled and giggled at the same time.

I imagined Mary's spiritual journey to this lowly spot in her plastic statue life. Some deeply religious person probably got her at some church gift shop, placed her on a loved ones grave with a sincere prayer of peace and love and the hope that one day, when deal goes down, they will run open armed to each other and sit watching the daffodils sway in the breezes of heaven. But then the groundskeeper, just trying to get his job done and get paid, probably listening to Black Sabbath on his iPod, ran over Mary with his cutting blades, flinging her across the grass to land hopelessly - and possibly taking that poor person's prayers with her - at my brother's headstone.

The indignity.

I went home and told my mom this story - Hahaha, Billy has a little plastic beat-up statue of Mary leaning on his tombstone.

Oh, I think the Mary is nice, my mom happily informed me. Then she went back to piddling around the kitchen - la-la-la-la.

Wait, whaaat?

Turns out, it was my mom who put the Mary there and is, therefore, responsible for Her getting run over by a lawnmower.

I will not repeat the rest of the story of how it came to pass that Susie Daugherty put the Virgin Mary at my brother's grave because certainly hell, fire and damnation would strike us all, and possibly burnout out the eyeballs of any religious person reading this post, but believe me, it. is. a. doozy.

Mary, I am sorry you got chewed up by lawn mower on our watch.