I had to race to the funeral home today to drop off the bag of special items that will be buried with my father.  Along with photos and notes from friends, I included the things he really, really loved:

1)  Cell phone and charger.  No one was hooked to a cell phone the way my father was.  Even the day before he slipped into a coma he was trying to access messages.

2)  Lock of hair and note my mother gave him in 1958.  They must have been important to him, since he still had them.

3)  Pack of cigarettes and a lighter.  A must.

4)  Lucretius, The Way Things Are.  I gave this to him when I was in college, and he loved it.

5)  Sir Thomas More, Utopia.  This was the last birthday gift I gave him, and he liked it but did not have a chance to read it.  Now there will be plenty of time.

6)  Father’s Day card I made when I was a little kid.  This was the one thing from my childhood he still had among his possessions, so in it went.

7)  Glasses

8)  Library card

9)  Paper and pen

10) Comb, to support his unending vanity.  Did I mention anywhere how many pairs of shoes he left behind?  Something like 60 pairs – and he spent the last weeks of his life fixating on one pair of tan, snub-nosed loafers that were lost and that he had to have.

11)  Nitrazine paper test key (he was into the pH thing for years)

All of this and more fit into a gallon-size Ziploc bag.