You have GOT to be kidding me.

I’ve heard every dumb joke you can imagine.

“I bet her head is in a basket somewhere.”

“She’s no longer head and shoulders above the rest.”

“She can’t even handle the truth. Get it? HANDle?”

The revelers inevitably cackle at their own wit, while I roll my eyes. Yes, I still have them up here. No, the thieves didn’t make off with them. They might have taken my statuary - my expensive marble - but I can assure you livings that I am intact. Well, as intact as can be for someone who has been dead longer than I was alive.

When the theft happened, I thought, “You have GOT to me kidding me!” As if I deserved such looting. But when you’re in a world beyond, all you have is time. Something I never got enough of in my physical being. Teenagers by the looks of them came in the middle of the night and were able to knock my head and arm clean off. Mother Nature had done most of the work already, so it was quite easy. Indeed, I was shocked it took someone that long.

You see, my marble was valuable. My husband was a well-known baker here in Tampa. People lined the streets each day to get their hands on his scones, muffins, and donuts. But it was his simple white bread that kept them coming back, kept them spending their Depression-era pennies on us. The bakery was the heart of the community, and the heart of my family. We weren’t wealthy, and like everyone suffered a great deal during the turbulent 1920s, but getting up every day and helping my husband knead and press and shape and form dough was an anchor for my soul.

Yet we suffered a great loss when our young daughter died of tuberculosis. Thankfully we had the means to bring her home and bury her in this family plot, that she didn’t end up in a mass burial site somewhere with only a generic memorial to her name. After she died, I went on auto-pilot. I know I had a good life, but the sun was dimmer, the bread dough no longer my life line. Most of my years were spent waiting for death, hoping I could see her again. It took 23 grueling years, but here we are together again as a family.

It was when we least expected it that someone came and ripped off my marble head and hands. Oddly, it reminded me of the way people tore into our family baked goods - a sly look of guilt, a quick rip, and an eye roll of elation when the crumbs melted on their tongues. Except this time the elation came when loading my head and arm into the back of a rusted pickup truck. I mean, please. Have some dignity as least.

So yes, you now see why my first thought was: you have GOT to be kidding me? I figured in death I would get some peace. I hoped being back with my family in spirit would make me whole. And it has. Sort of. But the theft is a reminder that life down below is turbulent. Unflinching. Unfair. It was like watching a part of my legacy be ripped away. The statue was a chance for me to be someone other than “the bread maker’s wife.” The gleaming marble made me feel important. Stand out. Matter.

Yet I could do nothing but watch. Sure, I mean, I am not stupid. I tried to shake the trees with a sudden wind. But these thieves were not deterred. I guess when a handsome pay date awaits, a pissed of spirit really isn’t that much of a deterrent. I should think that perhaps these people needed the money in some way, but I cannot assuage their guilt for them. Stealing my head and arm was abhorrent.

As if my daughter’s death didn’t rip enough away from me. Now these strangers take what is my legacy and store it in their truck like another discarded memory. I laugh because I followed their process. These thieves thought they would sell the marble to a builder, but Mother Nature had so degraded it with her acid rain that it was worth nothing.

I had to laugh because I could hear them say to the man, jaws slack with disbelieve: “You’ve got to be KIDDING me.” They put the emphasis elsewhere, moving the shock down the line.

And there is something poetic knowing even the thieves have no idea how thermodynamics and acid rain work. They should have consulted me. After all, I spent my entire life surrounded by heat. Be it in the kitchen. In Florida. In hell when my daughter died.

It was such a beautiful dumb joke I have added to me repertoire up here. My small family gathers, asks me to tell the story of the look on those thieves’ faces when elements foiled them. Puffing with pride, I start by saying: “Want to hear the dumbest joke of all?”