Sharon Hashimoto's poem "What I Would Ask My Husband's Dead Father" was published in Hashimoto's first full-length poetry collection, The Crane Wife (Story Line Press, 2003). The poem was inspired by the poet's annoyance that her husband's family had left his father's ashes in a closet, where they remained more than a year after his death. (Cremation is a common Japanese funeral practice.) This led her to speculate on her own mortality and ultimately to question the rituals involved with life and death. The poem is typical of Hashimoto's work in that it deals with an incident involving her family and yet reaches out and touches a more universal issue.