In Celebration of Geri X's "When I Die"
I think I've finally decided what I want to happen to my earthly remains - that means my corpse, you know, the thing that serves no intrinsic purpose after death and stinks and eventually rots if worms/predators don't get to it first - after I die.
I mean, not the burial-or-cremation part. I've always wanted to be cremated, after whatever still-useful organs are harvested. Because, seriously, anyone who doesn't want to give their organs to recipients and/or science before having their body burned to ash is either insane or taking miserliness to insane levels. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO NEED YOUR BODY FOR?! If you want a place for your family to come and remember you, spend that $8,000 on having an artificial reef sunk, and your ashes spread over it; that way, we can all honor your life by catching the delicious grouper and amberjack you hath wrought, bringing life even in death, forever and ever amen. Or whatever. The point is, getting torched isn't going to hurt, I promise, and it will save valuable property for golf courses and Slip-N-Slide setup.
Plus, you know ... zombies [shudder].
No, I'm talking about what I want to happen between the gasp-choke-rattle and scoop-scoop ("Those're some fine ACL tendons there, Lou"), and the toboggan ride into the Final Toaster.
I mean, not the burial-or-cremation part. I've always wanted to be cremated, after whatever still-useful organs are harvested. Because, seriously, anyone who doesn't want to give their organs to recipients and/or science before having their body burned to ash is either insane or taking miserliness to insane levels. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO NEED YOUR BODY FOR?! If you want a place for your family to come and remember you, spend that $8,000 on having an artificial reef sunk, and your ashes spread over it; that way, we can all honor your life by catching the delicious grouper and amberjack you hath wrought, bringing life even in death, forever and ever amen. Or whatever. The point is, getting torched isn't going to hurt, I promise, and it will save valuable property for golf courses and Slip-N-Slide setup.
Plus, you know ... zombies [shudder].
No, I'm talking about what I want to happen between the gasp-choke-rattle and scoop-scoop ("Those're some fine ACL tendons there, Lou"), and the toboggan ride into the Final Toaster.
Obviously, I'm going to want those close friends of mine with whom I share an unspeakable secret involving a windy Halloween-weekend night and a slick cliff-side road to take my ol' soul-cell on one last bar crawl; that's a given. We'll hit the usual dives and live-music venues so everyone can vomit and say goodbye, but I'd also like to throw in a couple of those upscale dance places I never cared to attend in life - guys, feel free to break out painfully obvious lines about how I always said I'd rather die than go there, then manipulate my lifeless shell into the classic arm-around-the-shoulder-but-really-reaching-for-the-breast photo-op pose.
After that, and I'm serious here, I want to be dumped into the woods behind any given middle-class housing development with an appreciable population of middle-school kids. Leave me down by the creek, or perhaps near some cement drainage apparatus. Anywhere I'm sure to be found, and poked with a stick, by curious near-adolescents. Looking back, it seems some of the deepest and most important questions I had about life as a boy on the cusp of manhood were answered the first time I stood in the woods and poked a dead guy with a stick, and just knowing I might be a part of that experience for the next generation gives me hope.
So roll me on down that hill, and let 'em have at it. And if nothing shows up in the news in, say, a week, I'd appreciate it if you came and got my fleshy former prison, if only to sake of property values. After that, though, I'll take mine extra crispy.
After that, and I'm serious here, I want to be dumped into the woods behind any given middle-class housing development with an appreciable population of middle-school kids. Leave me down by the creek, or perhaps near some cement drainage apparatus. Anywhere I'm sure to be found, and poked with a stick, by curious near-adolescents. Looking back, it seems some of the deepest and most important questions I had about life as a boy on the cusp of manhood were answered the first time I stood in the woods and poked a dead guy with a stick, and just knowing I might be a part of that experience for the next generation gives me hope.
So roll me on down that hill, and let 'em have at it. And if nothing shows up in the news in, say, a week, I'd appreciate it if you came and got my fleshy former prison, if only to sake of property values. After that, though, I'll take mine extra crispy.
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I've made the wife swear that after I die, my remains are to be shot out of a cannon. The compromise was that it was ashes, not the actual dead rotting corpse.