Death Delights Me

Like I mentioned recently, I've been feeling a tad blue of late due to my work overload and my inability to play around the house and yard with complete abandon. At times like this when I'm a bit down, I often will revert to reading material that I know will cheer me up. So I put my regular reading on hold, and picked up a couple of P.D. James books: Shroud for a Nightingale and The Lighthouse. I find that a spot of jolly good Brit murder always cheers me up. Am I the only one who finds P.D. James to be comforting reading?

Anyway, once those books were done, I still wasn't quite ready to get back to my regular fare – I needed a little spot more of some deathly good writing. Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen really hit that death spot.

If you enjoyed Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, then I think Remember Me will be an interesting, if not amusing and slightly bizarre read for you.

I have yet to do anything about planning my end. It's just not high on my list of things to do. And I'm not big on pomp and ritual (the hubby and I got married at city hall, I wore a dress borrowed from my sister-in-law, and the hubby's best buddy drove us in his pick-up truck to the Royal York Hotel for our honeymoon), so I certainly wouldn't want my funeral to be a big deal. But that sure ain't the attitude for a lot of people in America, especially those boomers with all that disposable cash and plenty of ego. Remember Me's Ms. Cullen takes us on a tour of the new vision for deathly rituals – everything from biodegradable "green" burials to turning your loved one's ashes into Diamonds(!) to modern mummification. The standard drop in the box and stone on top is soooo yesterday, honey. Perhaps you'd like your loved one's ashes (or yourself?) to be scattered at sea? For a price, it can be done. Or better yet, why not have your ashes placed in an artificial reef? Your cremated remains (or as they say in the death biz, cremains) will be buried at sea, and you'll become part of a state-sanctioned reef-rebuilding project and within months host an active community of fish and wildlife. Even though you'd have shuffled off this mortal coil, you'd still be doing good for the environment. Hell, that's more than a lot of people do who are still breathing, baby.

Ms. Cullen also turns our attention to how the funeral biz is changing (more and more people are choosing the cremains path), how you can, if you so desire, be plasticized in the name of science (and big bucks) once you meet your end, as well as how much fun you can have at the annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival in Nederland Colorado. Remember Me is an an amusing, funny, and at times quite heartfelt study of how Americans are choosing to design their ends. It certainly got me thinking a bit more about what I should do once I bite the dust. I kinda like how the over-the-top cheezy author Jacqueline Susann did it – she had her cremains placed in a special container, styled like a hardcover book, with "Jacqueline Susann 1918-1974" stamped on the front-cover side. Buried in a book. I do like that! Just don't try and read me in the bathtub, ok?

Comments

[Amy]

Must read this. I loved Stiff. But then, after reading Stiff I thought it might be nice to end up in that field in Tennessee, slowly dissolving in the sun. But that's just me.

[jenclair]

As a completely self-indulgent reader, I do love P.D. James (just finished The Lighthouse) and most British mysteries.

[Vicki]

Loved this post! Will definitely have to check this book out. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.

[Zachary Houle]

I can only hope that if I ever get married, that's the way I do it. None of this plan for a year, spend a crapload of money like much of my friends are doing. Assuming, of course, if and when.