August 10th, 2006 by The Bosphorus
Death. This is a death and mortality post. Yep. There’s not a bit of politics to be found in it. I had a birthday a little while ago, but that hasn’t occasioned any more thoughts about my own mortality…than usual.
No, the Missus and I were driving to Knoxville the other day. We saw a casket sitting out on the grass when we drove past the big cemetary near the Clinch River. It was a dull, silver rectangle box with rod handles. It was odd, really, to see it out in the open like that. I have to wonder if it was occupied, especially given the dog days heat we’ve had lately. It probably wasn’t occupied. I imagine it is some sort of grave liner, but then there were the ornate handles…
Anyhow, the Missus and I began discussing burials and such. It seems to me that The Missus is much more comfortable with this whole situation than I am. I mean hearses creep me out. I get the heeby-geebies when one stops next to me at a signal light. (They are annoying, too. I always get that stupid song in my head afterwards. You know the one about not laughing as the hearse goes by.) I’m resigned to the fact that I will die. I know that. There’s a great Flaming Lips song about this.
Oh, well.
The Missus and I continued our mortal discussion. We both agreed that it makes no sense to spend so much money on a casket. I just don’t see the point. So, when I die I want to be put in a casket of my own choosing. I don’t want one that is ostentatious. I want one like this. Seriously, that’s the one. It’s even made by monks. It’s no bargan, but it is better than a McCoffin. (I have to say I didn’t realize Costco sold caskets. That would be like going to Sam’s to buy a coffin.)
So, there you have it. One of my attempt to come to terms with my own mortality.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
That’s not a shabby casket, bos. AT and I are doing the whole “thrown into an oven thing” methinks. Although AT’s talked about being stuffed and mounted like a big grizzly bear. I’d use him as a coat rack.
And, from memory:
Don’t you laugh as the hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die
They cover you up in a big white sheet
From your head down to your feet
They put you in a big wood box
And cover you up with dirt and rocks
All goes well for about one week
And then the box begins to leak
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle in your snout
They eat your eyes, they eat your nose
They eat the jelly from between your toes
So don’t you laugh as the hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die.
May or may not be right. I read it in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I was a morbid kid.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
There’s always cremation, bos. That’s what awaits me, according to my will.
BTW, have you guys made out your wills? Don’t want to end up like Terri Schiavo, do you?
August 10th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Parents and AT both know how I feel about being kept alive artificially, though AT says he’d do it out of spite.
Bastard doesn’t know I’ve been dosing him with arsenic for a year.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
I’m with Joel. My plans are for cremation…but if I were to be planted this is the box for me.
http://www.casketfurniture.com/items.php/casketfurniture_phone_booth.html
August 10th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
As the add says, “talk till you drop…” heh
August 10th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Wow! A dial phone! Cool!
August 10th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Years ago, back in the late 80’s, there was a guy in Georgia that built coffins that served double duty. I always thought that his casket entertainment center was cool.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Oh wow haven’t thought of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036613/ Arsenic and Old Lace in years. That was a good movie for it’s time period.
Yes living wills, along with wills and decisions about guardianships are not something we like to think about but are a necessary evil.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
I loved the Scary Stories series. Those books have some creepy illustrations.
My link isn’t exactly clear, but I want the one at the bottom of the page there. At one point I remember the monks would send you your coffin early and outfitted w/ shelves.
I’ve thought about cremation, but nah, put me in a box.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:23 am
The plain pine box is my choice too… but only after they’ve donated any usable parts. There’s something about organ donation that almost feels like cheating death, so that’s my exit strategy. And Joel is right — if you don’t put something in writing about life support, there are no guarantees. The forms are on the State’s website, here. I did it just after the Terri Schiavo fiasco.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:45 am
See, I just don’t care, because I’ll be dead. I want the easiest, cheapest way of discarding this big assed body I’ve managed to grow for myself so that whoever’s doing it can get back to business as usual as quickly as possible. Hell, if the stuffed and mounted thing won’t fly, chop me up in garbage bags, or put me in a N. Georgia crematorium. I don’t care, I’ll be dead.
Regarding death and mortality, Bos, this kinda stuff always gets me thinking. I like to think I have an enlightened view of it , and I don’t fear it at all, other than what my being gone will do to the people I love. My Moms a hospice nurse, and before that was a nurse on an oncology ward, so I picked up a lot of it from her, but there have been two times in my day that I figured I was immenently going to die. Both times, I had the time to accept its happening. Course, there were mitigating circumstances both times (craziness in the head the first, and the second, well, DXM, which I certainly don’t recommend to the kids).
Why waste time being worried about it?
Also, I think its facinating that you’re a pretty spiritual guy, while I have no real post mortal plans. I wonder if that affects our reasoning
Finally, my plan is to hang on just long enough to make the first wave of either cyberbiology or longevity pharmacuticals, wipe out any chance of natural death, and partay. Thats right folks, AT is a closet futurist.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Here’s something really morbid. I was listening to an article on the radio yesterday about this new option… Plastination
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5553329
August 11th, 2006 at 11:20 am
I wanna be turned into a diamond.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Wow, GAC. I was leaning toward cremation, but the diamond is beyond all awesomeness.
The notion of preserving the body for as long as possible after death (through air-tight steel caskets, etc) gives me the creeps. Geez, you’re dead. Decompose already.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Diamond is the winner.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:50 am
I was reading about how organic cemetaries are becoming popular. You don’t get embalmed and any artificial materials (metal plates, plastic joints) are removed. You’re put into a decomposable container and buried, no headstone or anything. I think that’s kind of cool, too. But isn’t the whole point of being buried so that friends and family have a place they can associate with you?
August 11th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Ugh. A rental casket.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Why associate the person with the location of their body? I think thats one of the problems with western society.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
I dunno? Because it’s weird to talk to someone who’s not there? When you’re at a grave site, the person’s technically there, even if they’re not there there.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Can someone tell me why these folks put stickers in the rear windows of their cars memorializing a loved one? Like…”In loving memory of Billy Bob Mouthbreather, 1976-2004,
Mommy misses you baaaaaby.”
Am I the only one that thinks those people are weird as hell?
August 11th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Heh. AT and I have mocked those many a time. When I die, the only thing I want my name on is a massive wing of some incredibly important building.
Booyah.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
AT, the spiritual side factors in different ways and usually depending on my mood. I’m a Christian and my religion tells me I have a soul. I have faith in that, because I can’t prove it. However, I go back and forth on this. I think one of the problems w/ Western Civilization is its latent dualism. It’s never really given up on this notion that there’s me and then there’s my body. So you get goofy notions like disembodied spirits, or more seriously, Gnosticism in all its glorious forms. When Christianity is truest to its roots, Judaism, it argues very strongly against the Gnostic notion that the body is inferior to spirit. When Christianity is at its worst it sees the body as merely a vehicle for a spirit. When that happens you see the body subjugated in horrific ways. That is one problem I see with disassociating a person w/ their body.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
As much as you an AT love to drink beer….maybe a wastewater treatment plant. They’re big.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Yeah Bos, but doesn’t Christianity teach us that the spirit is immortal but the body is mortal and we won’t have any use for it in the after life?
August 11th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Heh.
The AT Memorial Cesspool.
August 11th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Actually, I was under the impression that the bible says that the bodies and all will be coming back on judgement day, but I haven’t been to sunday school in a few years…
Bos, I haven’t given much thought to the Gnostic/Judeo body vs. spirit thing. I grew up catholic, so they’re a bit more toward the gnositic side of it, in that the body is spirit.
Be, being a somewhat spiritual person without adherence to any sort of dogma, kinda like thinking of the spirit as energy, and the body as matter, and the difference between them being a matter of physics. I think theres a spirit, in that I think it is the software running the hardware that is our bodies. I think, however, that its something palpable, in that it is something that will one day be able to be mapped and transferred onto other media other than the cellular mush that is our bodies. Therein goes AT with his futurism.
If you look at your existance for long enough as a series of 1s and 0s, not in a borg “we are all connected blaaaah” way, but in an objective “chemical reactions mixed with electrical zaps creates every single thing in your head way”, I don’t see how spirituality becomes something hard to debate.
Whether it survives after the cellular mush decays, well, thats up to your dogma.
Way back when, I heard something attributed to Sagan, or Hawking, or Einstein (probably not the latter, as he was pretty religious) indicating that as matter converts to energy, and thus can’t be created or destroyed, we’re all immortal in certain ways. Does that mean consciousness (which I interpret the Judeo-Christian spirit to) is immortal?
Hell dude, I dunno.
Something I’ve thought about also is that the atoms in your body aren’t the atoms in your body you had a few years ago. If the building blocks of your body change, is it still the same body? Does X = Y?
Anybody still reading this?
And Joel, I’ll probably get a lot worse than a cesspool named after me, I’m afraid.
August 11th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Daco, AT’s right about the resurected body. That’s how it’s formulated in the Nicene Creed. At, Xtianity is always, IMHO, fending off one sort of Gnosticism or another. This is the idea that pops up variously stating that spirit, energy, or someother disembodification is struggling against cellular mush (I like that–cellular mush.) I understand Catholicism to be generally against it. They’re the ones who first named it a heresy. But your point is well taken.
It seems to me that you don’t have to make a distinction between energy and matter, but then that’s my cereal box degree in physics speaking.
Why did you say that Einstein probably wasn’t responsible for the quote due to his religiosity?
I don’t agree that consciousness is the same as spirit. (I have no idea what spirit is and trying to defining it drives me nuts.) I’d say we’re spiritual beings in spite of our consciousness.
I’d say my experience of myself leads me to believe I’m the same person I was yesterday. I think so at least…
What’s curious to me is alzheimer’s disease. Here an individual consiousness falls apart and the person ceases to be what they were. Memory is such an important part of our identity. anyway…
August 11th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Sorry Bos, the Nicene Creed doesn’t formulate anything about the resurected body that I can see…http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm.
I’m a spiritual idiot, but I can read…please explain
August 11th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Thanks Daco for that link. I’ve never seen that site before.
The Nicene Creed mentions the “resurection of the dead” in the last sentence. While bodily resurection isn’t explicit in the Nicene Creed, I take that reference to mean as much. Bodily resurection is explicitly stated in the Apostle’s creed, which predates the Nicene Creed by a hundred years, at least.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Ummm… Those aren’t the Missus’s words above. They’re mine. Stupid sign-in thingy ought to recognize me by now.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
The point is dude or dudette…God is in my estimation one powerful cat. Whether I am cremated or simply decomposed in a fancy box, if it is his intention that I raise from the grave and regenerate a body or if he gathers my cremated ashes to regenerate a body…to meet him in the air…it’s up to him and he can do what he wants.
Cells is cells man…just ask Joel.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Amen.
I think Joel’s a lurker on this comment string.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Well, I gotta agree, cells is . . . cells.
I find the whole discussion kinda quaint. A major reason for religion in the modern world (now that we know how planets move and what makes weather) is to help people deal with the finality of death. If cell biology helps you, go with cell biology. If Santa-Claus-in-the-sky helps you, go with Santa.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Why would you say that?
August 11th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Uh . . . because I believe it’s true? Why would you say something?
August 11th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
I’d say death maintenance has always been a “major reason” for religion in any time period and not only in the modern world. It’s funny, but modern medicine has been captivated by death, too. I’m refering to the great amount of energy and money put into keeping death at bay.
I think religion is at its best when it deals w/ the here and now. This brings me back to another reason for not separating body and spirit. When you do, religion tends to ignore our day to day existence. You get folks using god to pillage and plunder the earth, etc…
August 11th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
” . . . modern medicine has been captivated by death, too. I’m refering to the great amount of energy and money put into keeping death at bay.”
Indeed. Fear of death drives every age. Medicine, though, doesn’t pretend to give death meaning, the way religion does. Medicine simply sets itself as the enemy of death. And, of course, there’s lots of money in the anti-death biz. Want to understand human folly? Follow the money.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
If you’ll notice the timing Joel, my “Why would you say that?” comment was directed at Bos.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Ah. OK. Copy that.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Mea culpa.