they will wrap you in scraps of skinny jeans tied off neatly at the feet so that only your big toes protrude, polished Totally Toffee but chipped, a little. And when you die, there will be Styrofoam platters of dragon roll sushi & General Tsao’s chicken and carmeled apples from the big grocery store that also sells haircuts and Halloween costumes and snow shovels and prescriptions for Prozac. And when you die there will be Hardy’s chardonnay in a box on ice and small plastic tumblers as transparent as air, and as lovely. And when you die, friends will sprinkle blue Gatorade around you until the sky turns black and streetlights pop on and fizz like Pop Rocks on your tongue when you were in fifth grade and still thought you had it all in front of you. And when you die, the Weber gas grill will reduce you to ashes the size of the Rubbermaid most often meant for sandwiches or nails or occasionally hope in a leftover lasagna. And when you die there will be layer after layer after layer cake. There will be lotioned Kleenex on hand for all 374 of your Facebook friends who will later post on your wall: Rest in peace, my friend, and Just saw the new Harry Potter movie and laughed at how much you’d hate it and Check out this youtube video of a guy who eats Twinkies and loses 27 pounds— And when you die they will tag you in photos like the Halloween you were a 1970s feminist or the Christmas you wore homemade elf hats for the family photo or the debut of your new eyeglasses which were purple cat eyes with rhinestones that glittered under a new moon that saw you through your 30s with little to no damage. And when you die, your Cooking Light subscription will expire; your bathroom wallpaper will curl like pale eyelashes; the laptop you’ve been loyal to will fly into the lap of your best friend, Sue. And when you die it will rain in a way that verges on hurricane and violence and before you know it you’ll be swept along into the Erie Canal which will be clotted with rubber ducks and rusted grocery carts and a history that pervades even the darkest corner of your town. And when you die surely there will be twigs snapping in Minnesota and maybe a loon will issue a mournful cry over Lake Minnewawa where your dead grandparents’ knotty pine cabin has magically doubled itself and grown a kitchen island and a 5 stall garage and a deck so high even the hummingbirds can’t reach it. And when you die the walls of your old purple bedroom, slanted like a barn, will slowly part and rise and open to reveal a Midwestern sky more heartbreaking than any you have ever seen, though you almost found it once in Taiwan one lonely April as you turned forty and bought yourself a birthday cake in the basement of the Shin Kong department store while mannequins watched and you emerged into dusk with no idea where you were. And when you die, the old telephone you’d yielded long ago to cell will fracture the air with its hard lusty ring, and who will answer? What message will be left? It is your mother: I didn’t really want anything, she’ll say. Just watching Martha Stewart and drinking coffee and wondering what you’re doing. And when you die, these are the last words you’ll hear, and inside the static of a long distance line there will be stars, and a rainbow flag flapping, and cereal softening in a bowl of milk, and then quiet, and then a beep.