I stay in bed, where I can piss away hours toying with the mindless voyeurism, amusing distractions, and faux self-awareness contained in my pretty little touch screen world. All the while pretending that the snow and the sorrows of the tangible world aren’t piling up right outside my door. I have better things to do. Like combing the internet for ideas on what should be done with my corpse, for example.

Having my dead body put out on display in a box and then buried in the ground seems so old-fashioned, so pedestrian, so dull and depressing. There must be a better way. And what do you know, there is. My former high school classmate and new Facebook friend Sasha Marnelli has clicked “Like” on a share from my old arsehole enemy, Becky Chickenshit. Becky’s comment reads “Here’s one for vain egomaniacs . . .” Naturally, I click on the link. There it is. The most brilliant way to be dead I’ve ever seen. I want to be made into a diamond.

A company in San Francisco called Gem-Mortalize takes your ashes and squashes them into a big fat shiny diamond. They even do different colours. Mama’s gonna hate it, but I don’t care. It’s my death and I’ll be a diamond if I want to. Mama can have my sparkly stone self set into a tiara and wear me to fancy parties. Or she can just hold me in her hands late at night when she’s drunk and alone and listening to John Denver, or lift me up to the sun, and revel in the light as it bounces through my coloured, crystalized facets. A new perspective when her world gets dull and flat without me. Mama, make me a diamond when I’m dead. Strong. Brilliant. Beautiful. In-de-fucking-structable. Who could say no to a dying wish like that?

Mama comes home from work looking more exhausted than usual. Thinner, too. They’ve been running her ragged at the Gale. One week she’s on nights, the next week all days, plus staggered split shifts and overtime she won’t turn down. If she wasn’t so damn proud, a seasonal layoff would probably do her a world of good. Let her arthritic joints rest so she wouldn’t have to be marching around pretending she isn’t in agony all the time. And maybe she wouldn’t have to sit by herself every night and get just drunk enough to fall into a relatively pain-free sleep. Mama, ever the pragmatist. Even in her vices. But there’ll be no pogey for Effie Fortune. She would rather work herself to death than take the dole. And they know that about her at the Gale. So they take full advantage.

Still, this isn’t ordinary toilet-scrubbing, bed-making fatigue on her face. This is different. The confusing clouds that have been hovering over her have finally started to break up, but not into anything like the brightly coloured fiesta of feelings I got used to seeing around her. Gradient, grainy charcoal lines scribble and scramble around her head in a shifting, static-filled silhouette. She pours herself a shot, heaves her tired, goofily dressed bones into the rocking chair, closes her eyes, knocks back the contents of the shot glass, and then minces no words.