Well, you hear of these things happening, probably a hundred times if you watch Dateline, and now it’s happened right here, one street over from mine. Fellow put his mom in his ice chest so he could keep collecting her Social Security. I have questions.

How big is that ice chest? We shopped for one back when I was making a lot of pies, and Dave was fairly adamant that it should be one of the smaller ones. I was surprised because he certainly was in favor of me making as many pies as I could, but maybe he was thinking long-term. And if I did want a little bonus time to collect his Social Security, I’d need a big ice chest. He was a big man.

On the other hand, the fellow here in town? His mom was 104. I tend to think of 104-year-old women as being on the petite side. A small ice chest could do the trick. 104 is old. Eventually, SSA might have inquired into her health. If they didn’t, the Trump Administration would flag her for voting while probably dead. They’re all over that shit. They think there’s a real problem with dead people voting, even though most of them are past caring.

I’ll just say it. By the time you’ve trudged past a hundred, you’re not 100% anymore, I don’t care who you are. The best anyone ever says about people that age is that they still have all their marbles. That doesn’t mean those marbles are all still rolling around in the brain pan. They could be inside a lavender sachet in the handkerchief drawer. I’ve known a number of people whose moms got into the triple digits, and even the really nice ones are all Okay, mom, it’s been great, but it’s time to wrap things up now, even if they don’t say it out loud.

No idea how this fellow here felt about his mom, but there was at least one thing about her that he appreciated, and if it was all the same to the authorities and the Social Security Administration, he thought he could keep it going for a while. Sort of a monthly remembrance. Thank goodness, there’s no evidence his mom was alive when he put her in the freezer. She certainly wasn’t when the police, alerted by another son who might have been in a will, came in to check on her welfare. The fellow they hauled off admitted as much when asked about her. “She’s not okay,” he told them.

It’s possible he didn’t think it through. Chest freezers are efficient, energy-wise, but there are problems. Even in normal use, you’re going to find something in a gallon Ziploc down at the bottom that looks like snow, and you don’t know if it’s meat or blueberries, so you put it back. And you always have to move stuff around to find the pot roast you’re sure you put in there. Add your dead mom to the picture, you’re exacerbating the situation. Especially if she’s in there intact. No word on how compact she was, but 104-year-old ladies aren’t always real flexible. Fortunately, they do tend to be brittle, so even with a standard kitchen meat mallet you could probably get away with portioning her in freezer paper, marked with the date and a nice picture of a lily. Out of respect.

Subsequent reports have indicated a chest freezer was not even involved, but instead a regular refrigerator. This is so much worse. There’s no way she’s going to fit in the crisper drawer and even celery gets funky pretty fast in there. If she was in the freezer portion, it had to have been a side-by-side. They do make refrigerators with WiFi connectivity, which might have been important to your mom before you put her in the freezer, but probably not, because, you know, 104. Also, dead. Also, if it’s important to you to get your mom’s Social Security, it’s really likely you do not own that nice a refrigerator.