This week, I was riding my bike on the east side when a strong, oily smell smote my nostrils. I looked around and saw a darkish cloud roiling above a funeral home. “Oh, cripes! They’re incinerating someone!” was my first reaction. And I somewhat recoiled at the sight; and unreasonably so. After all, they do indeed burn dead people — they call it cremation. You get to keep the ashes of your loved one if you want; you can hold onto them or scatter them in some special place.
But, having that blackish smoke invade my day was sobering and I couldn’t help feeling offended or intruded upon. Thought, “Shouldn’t they do this at night?” I always thought that funeral ovens were so incredibly hot that there would be no troublesome smoke. And indeed, as I stood with my bike, transfixed by the evidence of the ceremony within, the smoke was replaced by clear, shimmery heat waves emanating from the large chimney. (Mission accomplished.) I wondered, “What does the roof look like? Lots of bits of burned people up there?”
“Hey Frank, it’s your turn to go up and sweep off the roof.”
Dark. Sorry. But what do you expect, given the tableau d’morte I had just witnessed?
Then, I considered the other posthumous rites and practices we encounter. Chances are that you, like me, have attended the open-casket funeral where the deceased loved one lies there, a waxen, plastic facsimile of the person you knew and loved. Other times, the coffin holds someone who merely looks peacefully asleep.
Then we bury. And erect a monument, or at least plant a flat marker. And a vast city of the dead … and their living attendants … spreads out below the trees, surrounded on all sides by life. I haven’t been to my parents’ graves up in Sault Ste. Marie since we buried my Mom a few years back. So many graves, unvisited, unacknowledged, although not necessarily forgotten.
So, what do you want them to do with you? When the time comes. When you have to be dealt with.
I think of the options: ashes scattered in the Scottish Highlands, or across the waves of Lake Superior or the Irish Sea (brrrr!); a dignified, imposing granite block marking my resting place in a lonesome bone yard somewhere; a Reebok shoebox containing my ashes surreptitiously buried in the woods by a trout stream. My wife Jane wants a large statue of Venus rising from the waves on a half-shell, but no grave to go with it. Do you want to be embalmed or “go green”? Do you want a sealed, steel casket (funeral director will say how this will “protect” the remains in perpetuity, i.e. forever) or in a plain wooden variety?
Old lyric:
The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
The ones that go in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry
Do you think you deserve or need that 4×8 piece of real estate? Do you want to be “preserved”? Do you want to go out in a flash of super-heat, maybe wee bits up the ol’ chimney and down for rooftop repose or to infiltrate some biker’s nose? And what music do you want played at your funeral. I’ll insist on “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
What do you want them to do with you? And why?
