Merry Christmas !

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Thanks for correcting my spelling. I got all the way through Grad school without learning how to spell.

"The next in line" is about a robust young man who takes his mentally and physically frail wife on a driving trip through Mexico. They stop at a place that is so dry, bodies buried in the cemetary don't rot, they mummify, all by themselves. This is a good thing, because in this cemetary, you can only rent plots, not buy them. So when you get tired of paying $50 every ten years for Uncle Joe's grave, he is uneasrthed and stood in the nearby Cave of the Dead, propped up on a metal post, in a long line of other mummified dead without rent (I assume the Cave and the dry cemetary are real, but I don't know). Well, robust, insensitive young man insists on taking his wife to see the Cave (a great tourist and local attraction). She almost dies then, but manages to live until that night, when she begs husband not to leave her standing in the Cave of the Dead if she should die. "Don't be rediculous," he says, and they go to bed. She has a quiet but fatal stroke. The last scene of the story is the husband driving back toward the U.S., absently patting the vacant seat beside him.