On the event of my death

I don’t need to tell you not to be sad. Most likely you will out celebrating. Try to raise a happy thought about times with me, as well.

I want to be burned. On no account in a wooden coffin. That’s a waste of a good tree. A recycled cardboard one would be okay, one from here. I could live with that.

Did you know that many coffins are made of chipboard overlaid in veneer. Chipboard decays slowly, releasing harmful gasses into the environment – quite aside from all of the things in its manufacture.

My coffin needn’t, necessarily, be a huge construction. To make my body size fit into the smallest space, I would like all usable organs to be removed. Sell them on eBay. Give them to your friends. Hide them in a colleague’s desk. Perhaps even let them go for transplant. Did you know that, if your organs aren’t used to save lives of others, they will be taken out as part of the embalming process. Presumably lost down the drains. Or used to stiffen milkshakes in (insert name that would get me sued here). So what’s the point in not being a donor. You won’t be buried intact. May as well save lives.

Its funny, though, calling it saving lives. Really its just postponing death. You can’t save life. It ends – its just a question of when. Remember, kids, childhood’s over the moment you know you’re going to die.

All this is assuming you don’t just get my body stuffed. I’m assuming you won’t, but if you do, I’d like my eyes to be replaced with big red lightbulbs that stick out – the sort that you see on fairground rides. Then I could be placed in a glass case and, whenever someone walks near, the eyebulbs would light up and my mouth wired to moved, and say, “Bugger off” or “lend us a tenner”, whilst my arms flail about. Perhaps I should make recordings, just in case.

Of course, you could seal my body inside a glass case, together with some sort of plant and some bacteria/ insect / pet cat, and see if it comes up with a whole new ecosystem.

Like I said, this seems unlikely. So, I’ll be burned, in my cardboard coffin (hell, use the box that the tv came in if you want, just smash up my legs with an axe so that they fit). Its a shame, if I was to be buried it would be to the song “there’s a world going on underground” underground by Tom Waits. Being cremated, I’ll have to make do with “I’m the Firestarter”.

And what to do with the ashes. Well, there’s no point in leaving me to fester in an urn for all eternity. You could sprinkle me onto a sand pit. Make me into an egg timer. Get me turned into a diamond. All would be good: I’d either serve a purpose, at last, or finally be beautiful. Maybe just tap spoonfuls of me into the air vents of random but beautiful cars, so I get to travel in the vehicles I never owned. Use your imagination. Don’t get too tied down to a place. You need imagination for remembrance, nothing more.

Have a party. A big party. Drink loads. Try to drink so much that you pass out, with one eye still open. Its both big and clever to do this.

With luck, there will be at least half a century to go before any of the above will apply.

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10 years ago

[…] respect of the event of my death, I was reminded by a friend of another variation I had once suggested: being preserved (fully […]