| Pleasant Dinner Conversation |
[Jul. 1st, 2011|09:04 am]
terribleturnip
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So we went out to dinner last night with some friends we haven't seen since last summer -- and have been stationed overseas for the past three years and are just now returning home. Dad's still out of country for a while, but Mom and the two kids, 6th and 9th grade are back to get settled before the school year starts. So, this was sort of a quiet welcome home at our mutually favorite restaurant. And, eventually, the conversation turned to cadavers.
AND THIS IS WHY I LOVE THEM.
And then led to what do you want to happen to your corpse when you die. Right now my paperwork says I'm a whole body donation, with the ashes to be put in a reef ball or otherwise tossed in the ocean if that's cost prohibitive and in that case, I plead with my heirs to mix the ashes in with some chum or baitfish at least because I am all about the circle of life.
My hope is that it will become legal to be mixed into some compost and then, a year later, my loved ones would gather to have a BLT with tomatoes fed by yours truly. My DREAM is that I'll be fed to pasture raised hogs and everyone can come back a year later to have a commemorative BLT and I will be the BACON.
Because I am all about the circle of life and I so want to get right back into the scrum.
But however it works out, no service. My friend's mother recently lost her companion of several years and has decided there will be no service as he's been ill for years, with no friends beyond her and no family to speak of. I hope I'm not in that situation when I go. I suspect I'll have friends. As long as I can cook and put out, I suppose there will be SOMEONE.
The Captain can't wrap his head around me not wanting a service. This is where we are two polar opposites. I mean, look, if y'all want to call a Happy Hour in my honor, well okay. But an official Wake? No. Don't even THINK about an actual service with speechifying and all that. Good heavens, just get on with your life!
I think I was born without whatever it is that leads people to memorialize things. They just put a memorial to 9/11 up in Kensington, a little seating area around a twisted girder and a cement block, the girder from the Twin Towers, the block from the Pentagon.
And all I can think about is the thousands of things that that money would have been better spent on. There's already a memorial in New York...WHERE IT HAPPENED. And okay, I'm understand that. But what the hell does KENSINGTON need with a chunk of it? At least Kensington was part of the Pentagon crash response, but still...I'm pretty sure there's a poor person in town eating cat food or unable to afford their medication who could have used that money more. Or maybe some new equipment for the fire team, so they'll stop hiking up my damn taxes.
Admittedly, if it were up to me, a lot of inspiring or breathtaking architectural monuments never would have been built.
Although in my head...I'm still not entirely certain that's a bad thing.
Anyway, best leave me off your memorial planning committee and if you want me to execute your estate...you'd better be very clear about what you want to happen, because you probably do NOT want that decision left in MY hands! |
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