if you must know
mum & dad weren’t exactly sympatico
and as relationships go
their’s went
sixty years a slow descent
into compromise and argument

take dogs, for example
mum liked them on the bed to cuddle
which was trouble
Dad was adamant
a recipe for accident
basically bad dog management

then he died
and mum was suddenly free to lie
with as many dogs on the bed as she liked
(but to be honest
it wasn’t quite the love-in promised;
mum was serially dog monogomous)

then SHE died
after a few more dogs had gone by
their ashes in boxes waiting on the side
which was a predicament
because mum’s preferment
was to take them with her in the interment

I wasn’t around
when four little boxes went into the ground
in the cemetery plot where dad’s to be found
but I have it as fact
thunder cracked
and three of the boxes came flying back