I shower for longer than I need to, and wash my work clothes separately to keep crematorium dust out of the towels and sheets. My wife, Annie, wants to know what it’s like, but in my head it sounds like a fairy tale: the dead come from a magic place called the Silver Doors, from which they’re whisked into boxes or made to drink potions that turn them from yellow to green, then they’re painted pink and purple and powdered, and some are baked in an oven where they are turned into flour by special death-fairies. I am now a death-fairy. Instead of telling her all this, I just use up her hand lotion and watch Werner Herzog movies to cheer myself up. Annie and I live in the Wolseley neighbourhood of Winnipeg, known as the “granola belt” for its progressive politics and its high batik-wall-hanging-to-resident ratio. There are two organic grocers at the same intersection, a bakery that sells bread made from grass and spelt muffin-pucks (and awesome whole-wheat cinnamon rolls), and a cobbler who wears an unironic leather apron and fixes Birkenstock after Birkenstock.
