With my hand under my mother’s thigh I argued fiercely—her last wish, so beyond recall, such an unfair burden to lay on the back of your own child—but she would not listen to reason no matter how intensely I struggled, even when I resorted to an appeal to her lifelong religious convictions and observance, which was truly ironic since personally and publicly I had rejected all that. It’s a sin, a violation of our faith, and so on and so forth, I argued. The Torah says, Dust you are and to dust you return. We Jews bury our dead, that’s why we were given the land of Israel as our eternal estate—our resting place, in other words, our graveyard, our cemetery. Ma shook her head. She had already taken up too much space above ground. She could not bear to be weighed down under the earth with generations stomping on top of her, lying on her back in her grave looking up between their legs, the idea alone gave her a headache, suffocated her. She could not accept being plunged into the darkness, a plague so thick you could touch it. She could not abide the rain falling on her grave, the frost, the snow, the cold, she suffered at the very thought. She could not give herself over to be consumed by worms and beetles, recycled in the food chain, processed and excreted. She’d rather go up in smoke and be removed from the system.

The family will scream bloody murder, they will disown you, I said. Ma’s lips tightened. Let them compare her to scattered dust, then. For scattered dust, you are not required to sit shiva, you are excused from saying Kaddish.

You would have no grave or marker, I said, there would be no place you would be on this planet, I would have no place to come to if I need you.

Ma looked at me as at a stranger. She could no longer be at her post forever, faithfully waiting for me in case I needed her.

When the Messiah comes at the end of days, I cried in desperation, you would have no remains, you would have no body to resurrect, you would be reduced to ashes.

She closed her eyes sanctimoniously. She would be in good company then, with the six million.