I had a dream. In it, I was playing hide and seek with a little girl. I have the sense she was a grandchild. She had a frilly dress and thick pigtails both of which flowed behind her when she ran. Her melodic giggle bounced off the walls and brought life to the whole house. I was hiding behind a french door in the nest (where Marty and I sleep). I heard the small voice running from room to room, calling to me and giggling wildly after swinging each door open in surprise. I had such a big smile at the sport of it. Then Marty appeared in the doorway. I shooed her away. She said she needed to ask me something. I said I was hiding, and she was going to give up my spot. She said it was really important and would just take a second. I said I would talk to her in a minute, but I was hiding, and she was going to give me away. Hearing the little girl get closer, I told Marty to go away. She said she just needed to know how long she had to wait after I died before she could start dating Iranian John. My eyes snapped wide, and I woke genuinely startled. Who the hell is Iranian John?

That night at dinner, I shared my dream with the family. The ending, I unveiled with great flourish. At the final punctuation, everyone at the table turned to Marty with astonished faces. Surprised at this, she said, "What? It was a dream. It didn't really happen! I don't know anyone named Iranian John."

Yet.

Jump ahead two days. Iranian John was well behind me, but Marty used the story to force my hand on a topic I've been avoiding for more than twenty years. What to do with me when I die. I could see she was no longer going to entertain my jokey retorts (e.g., you mean IF I die). She said we needed to finally have a serious conversation about my wishes. Before I could reply she added, "I'm not going to freeze you. We don't have the money for that, and our basement freezer isn't big enough. So, what do you want done? I need to know, and you've never given me a straight answer."

She is right about that. This is not a topic I like to think or talk about, and I have a super-human ability to avoid things I don't like. Just ask my wife. Or my mother. Or my past employers. Or my colonoscopy-minded doctor. But Marty was done letting me get by with deflections about cryogenics and outliving her so I said, finally, I would think about it. But after a few days, I found it is a more complicated situation than it should be.

Marty is getting cremated, which means she will not occupy an actual burial spot on the planet. I don't want to be cremated, for an impressive number of reasons. After a few days of rumination, here is what I told, not just Marty but the whole dinner table. I said that my wish was to have my wake/funeral/viewing/service/whatever at a place a mile down the road. I have been to a few services there, and it seems to be the go-to place for many who grew up in my community. While I wasn't raised here, I have now been here longer than the place I grew up (Fort Collins, CO), and it is where I live at the moment. I then said I wanted to be buried with my mother.

That last bit (buried with my mother) may seem an odd choice for a grown man with his own family. But Marty is going to be cremated, and my kids are all talking about some new-age eco options that involve fungus and the like, and I'm a little spooked by all of that. And even though I've spent more time living away from my mother than I spent with her, she is still the one responsible for the immense wonder that is my life.

A thing to remember is this is my adopted mother. This means for a brief while, it was uncertain where I might land. The worst-case scenario was to never be placed and to have grown up an orphan. The next case is to land in a less-than-ideal spot. Over the years, I have learned this bad-landing option a pretty common outcome for kids "in the system," possibly the most common. So to have been placed with a woman who could not have shown me more love or support me more fiercely in my upbringing made everything that followed in my life possible.

Through her belief in me, I have never doubted my ability or capacity. I have never asked if I was good enough. I have never wondered if I was worth loving. Fact is, my mother did such a top-flight job, I didn't even know these were questions that had to be asked until I left home and met people who were not raised by my mother. In my travels, I have found these to be common questions for many, not just adopted kids.

So my mother made it possible for me to believe I could marry Marty, believe I could teach at a university next to Harvard educated faculty, believe I could have children and love them up so they would never wonder about their place or value in the world (of course Marty played the immense role in that last one, but it was my mother's modeling that told me I knew enough to have a chance there).

Many think their accomplishments and achievements come through "their" effort and abilities. There was a stretch of time I thought this. But in time, I realized my successes came through my mother's work (as well as a few other early mentors). So when it comes to where one's final resting place should be for someone who has lived in multiple parts of the world and whose current family will not be collected in a common spot, my place is next to the person who made everything possible for me from the start. I, and Marty, found peace in this resolution.

Then I learned I can't be buried with my mother. There was a time I could, but that time has passed. So that put me back to being frozen in my basement. When I mentioned this to Marty, without pause she said she would change her plans so that she and I could be buried together. I was touched and relieved by this sentiment. That is the type of top-flight partner my Marta is. But then I wondered, what is Iranian John going to think.