Should the suffocating cost of living lead you to contemplate suicide, read on:
"The cost of dying is at an all time high."
If cost alone doesn't alarm you enough to keep up with your payments and all those other forms of life support ... meds, meths, myths, whatever you're into ... think about this. There are just a few socially acceptable options for dealing with the castoff waste of your life, the remains.
Embalming. Embalming your body will require your bodily fluids to be siphoned and dumped, to be replaced with formaldehyde, a possibly carcinogenic substance of mystical fragrance that awkwardly marries memories of high school dissections with a ritualized human death.
Embalming is the clear favorite of Americans. We like to freeze stuff in time, particularly bodies.
I think of the living here as much as the dying, the youth drunken culture that takes a day in a life and holds it up as a constant to which we should look forward, or back to; the woman, aged 50, with the skin of 30 and the hair of 20, body parts scattered here and there on her life line, stalled unjustly in the progression of time.
And it is not just the body that we try to affix to the temporal mantlepiece. Memories, too, captured in photos, mementos of that ideal age, the one shown to demonstrate our life. As if a lifetime of choices, of awkward pauses, gawky stares, unfortunate choices based on discomfort and boredom, stirring moments of awareness, love, intimidation... as if all of this could be summed up in the photos of us at our our most picturesque moment, all parts symmetrical, all self-consciousness seemingly slipping away.
If you, like me, find these trends a little disturbing, cremation may be the better choice. Reduction by fire...way to go, you say! Bringing body to ash, simple, natural, discreet.
But you may be unaware of the quite sobering statistic that cremations are "possibly" responsible for over 14% of dangerous mercury pollution in the air and water supply through the burning of fillings in our teeth. Troubling.
With either option, your death, such as your life, wasteful, farcical or both.
So what to do with this accumulation of food, preservatives, bacterial and microbial guests and toxins that has come to inhabit the space that limits your mind, when the time comes?
Just what does a conscientious cadaver look like?
I've thought of a brazen option.
We could bury bodies! We could actually take our bodies, harvest for organs, and lay the rest into the earth, coffin-less, naked and accompanied only by the many other dead and living organisms that reside there. Here we could be properly ingested, perhaps imbibed (depending on the age and humidity) and utilized by the living.
Sadly, legitimate spaces for burying your body the old-fashioned way are rather difficult to find. To side-step the red-tape and get straight to the issue, you do have a few choices. 1) You could get lost in the wilderness and die, preferably in a humid and hot climate, maximizing efficiency for a quick and easy disposal and lessening the likelihood that your remains will be found before the deed is done. 2) You could get abducted and slaughtered by a creep and left to rot in a basement or wooded lot 3) Could get ambushed by a militia, be kidnapped and left for dead by a rogue band of drug dealers, 4) be consumed by a bear. But all options seem limited to somewhat gruesome last hours. You
could 5) wander off on a suicidal mission, determined to have the proper funeral by forcing the issue.
But this might defeat the purpose of usefulness that we are trying to maximize, for it is possible there might be some use left in your living. As one wise man put it, the world benefits from our presence in it:
- The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.
- W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
So, alas, the best option may be to plan for the right and proper disposal of your body at any surprising time, since this is how death is most often gifted.
It is high time for a renaissance in this commerce of the deceased. As citizens unified in the potential for an eventual demise, let us stand up and demand, while we still can, a dignified death. A death adorned with worms and fungi rather than chemicals and wooden fortresses. We deserve no less.
"A garish mahout decussates the moat on his pitiable pachyderm, heading to the bailey of the sullen king. Masking his puckish intent with a propitiatory smirk, he approaches the lair of the fugleman with little but a straggly skimmer and a merchant's dray. What fate awaits?"
