Or maybe, if I wind up in the same place, as I expect -
“Mom & Dad, over here.”
To those of you who expect to be cremated and scattered, I understand, and 15 years or so ago, I would have been solidly in your camp. But I’ve been doing a bit of genealogical research lately, and grave markers tell a story. And in the end, all we are is a collection of stories. Some day, somewhere, someone might look for the marker, and it might be a clue to where they came from, and it might be a story they could tell.
In truth, I expect that after the medical people take whatever spare parts are safe to harvest, the rest will be burned and the ashes will be put in a hole in a wall in the Vet cemetery mom & dad are in, but they probably won’t allow the ‘over here’ line. The stone will list my modest military accomplishments, and not anything else. They’re picky about that, but it’s mostly free to those I leave behind. That suits me.
I’d like my body to be turned into one of those museum exhibits with the preserved corpse cut into slices. So I guess my epitaph would be a nice little informational plaque written by an anatomist.
While I want the cremated route (no need to scatter. Find a dustbin), I could get behind a poem I wrote years ago with the appropriate title of “Epitaph”:
Someone like you must lie here. Roses thrive—
their petals red as meat and slick with oil—
given sufficient acid in the soil.
I’m donating usable body parts, skeleton and any remains will be cremated. The ash will be cast into a concrete yardage marker reading, “150 yards to clear water hazard”. It will be deliberately placed 160 yds from clearing the water.
Right now I’m planning on cremation, although I hope by the time I do actually kick off that the option for a tree burial will be available in the US (they plant you in a biodegradable pod and put a tree seed in with you, and you serve as fertilizer). If I do have an epitaph, it’ll be the book lover’s lament when finding out your book/series ends in a cliffhanger with no prospect of continuation.
