People are a bit funny about death.
Jerry Seinfeld said that people don’t understand death, the proof being that we include a pillow in a coffin.
I love phrases like “I’m prepared for death.”
What happens if you don’t adequately prepare for death? Is there a danger of stuffing it up and accidentally coming back to life?
If you think about it, just before your death is the one moment in your life where you can do absolutely anything and it won’t matter in the slightest.
Fear of death is possibly the most important founding principal of religion, because we don’t know what happens when we die and we’d like some answers.
But is that true?
I think we do know what happens when we die, we just like to pretend that we don’t.
I’ve been under the gas once, and it was a peculiar experience. I was looking at the face of an anaesthetist, then one microsecond later I was looking at the hospital ceiling and soon realised that an hour had passed.
I think most people would agree that the reason I have no memory of the intervening period is that I was unconscious. We all seem to be able to grasp the meaning of this word.
So when we die, why can’t we become unconscious indefinitely?
When I was getting surgery I was not summoned to the gates of heaven to have a character assessment performed. My consciousness simply did not exist. I have no reason to expect anything else from being dead.
I think most rational people agree that when a person dies, their consciousness is extinguished.
So why do we care so much about the dead body?
As soon as a corpse is involved people really start to lose objectivity.
Some people want to place the corpse in a box and leave the box a very short distance below the surface of the earth.
Is that really going to help?
If I’m sad about coming to the end of a bag of chips, I don’t put the bag in a box and store it under my house.
TV constantly informs me that even this is not enough ceremony; we actually need to take out funeral insurance in order to afford adequate lodgings for our corpses. The idea is that I pay these people a regular sum so that after I’m dead they’ll give a fraction of it back to me.
I’ve heard a lot of dumb ideas, but that one really takes the cake.
Most people choose to burn the corpse, which makes sense, but then they start doing odd things with the ashes. I can understand wanting a memento, but why does it have to be a hunk of dead flesh? I’ve met a lot of great people, but I’ve never felt the desire to posses burnt pieces of their dead bodies.
We want to remember our loved ones, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more with this. But if the most notable thing you ever did was to have your dead body burned and placed in a pot, then I’m afraid you’ve lived a disturbingly unremarkable life.
I remember people for their actions, their achievements, their company, their help and their love. None of those things have anything to do with their corpse.
A scab is quite like a dead body. The organism of community continues after the dead skin of a person has passed on. So do I take the scab, as a dead reminder for the living skin, and store it in a box?
Yes. But everyone at school thought it was heaps gross, so I threw it out.
A dead body is waste matter, essential for life, but unfortunately no longer providing that life. It is therefore very similar to a poop. Now I’m a sentimental arteest, but I draw the line at getting doe-eyed about poop.
The point of all this highly sacrilegious jocularity is that an individual should be remembered for the things that made them individual to you. Remember what they did, not what their physical body was made out of. And if you do want to remember their physical presence, use a photograph for Christ’s sake.
I don’t actually know anyone who keeps a person’s ashes in their house, but that seems to be a thing. So instead of a cumbersome container of crispy corpse, perhaps we should explore some more useful alternatives.
What about Grandpa’s old leg bones as cricket stumps?
Grandma’s skull could make a nice jewellery box.
If you know one of those old people who are constantly working on their tan, then you know where your next leather jacket could come from...
Come on people, if you can’t let go of their deceased bodies, at least get them working for you!
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