embodiment

Last night S. and I attended a visitation for a very close friend of his who died of cancer at age 46. Scary how that puts things into perspective. S. will be 45 next month. At the visitation, there was a closed casket, which confused me a bit because I knew that S.'s friend was going to be cremated. At dinner afterward, I learned that cremation still requires that the family purchase a casket; the whole thing goes into the furnace with the body inside.

All sentiment aside, this seems to me to be a racket. I've never warmed to the idea of cremation in the first place, but this makes me nuts. The idea of a multi-thousand-dollar casket getting buried in the ground made me kind of nuts, but this makes me double nuts. I've always said I want to be buried in the thinnest possible pine box so that I can become part of the earth sooner rather than later. In fact, I asked S. if he would just bury me in the back yard next to Belly (can't bear the thought of burning that beautiful body), but since that's illegal, I've decided to donate my body to science. Do something useful with me. Let someone learn how to perform plastic surgery on my chin that never really existed in the first place. Let someone learn how to do heart surgery or how to remove a spleen. If I leave this world with a body in tact enough to be of use in some way, go for it. Shit, use me as a crash-test cadaver.

S. and I are having all the important documents that come along with marriage being made up as we speak. I guess I better put this wish somewhere in there. If I die before that happens, use this blog entry in court. Set a precedent.