I’ll Trade You Maude for Lou by Jaclyn Adomeit

I trade funeral cards with people I meet in seedy Vietnamese restaurants. Today I exchanged ‘Maude Podiluk; 1961 to 2013; for none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself, Romans 14:7’ for a ‘Lou Mbituyimana; 1946 to 2015; Fuku sui bon ni kaerazu.’ I have a whole slew from friends’ parents: a teacher, a lawyer, a homemaker. They never state the cause of death, but I remember: heart attack, aneurism, a suicide. For the young it’s always car crash, car crash, car crash. It would up the value if you stated a cause. I’d trade five cancers for a man who got mown down by a train. How about a bear attack? You’ve never seen a bear attack card.

Jaclyn Adomeit lives in Calgary, Canada where she daylights as an environmental engineer. In her spare time she dances to old records in the kitchen, befriends stray cats, and hops on airplanes with her fiancé, Rayne, to explore new cultures and new places. Her work has previously appeared in Armchair/Shotgun, Literally Stories, and Flash Fiction Magazine.