July 24, 2006--With Or Without Sprinkles?

When it’s 110 degrees out there and for each of the past three days you’ve driven 300 miles into the sun and have spotted all but one license plate (still missig Delaware) and listened to the same five CDs at least a hundred times (particularly Neil Young’s terrific road music album After The Gold Rush), it’s only natural that Rona would ask, “Do you think about death a lot?”

I didn’t answer right away since I was listening to Neil singing, “Ask me why-i-i. Ask me why-i-i.”

“Really, Steven, I’m serious, do you?”

“Actually,” I finally responded, “I’ve been thinking maybe I want to be cremated and for you to scatter half my ashes in the Grand Tetons and the rest off the balcony of our flat on Mallorca, into the Mediterranean. I love both places so much. Though the wind on Mallorca would probably blow the ashes back at you. So you’d have to hike down to the water.”

“That’s not what I’m asking about,” it was hot even with the AC going full blast, and Rona was annoyed with me. “I am asking if you think about your death. Your dying. Not the arrangements after you die.” (In the background Neil Young had moved on and was singing, “Can you make arrangements with yourself.”)

“Not that much. In the family I come from, with both sides so involved with their cemeteries and family plots, it’s hard for me not to think about the arrangements side of death. I’m not really that much into the dying part.” I paused and then added, “Sorry. But I’ll think about my death if you want me to.”

Rona simply responded by turning up the volume.

We then found ourselves in a place where you could get the NY Times, albeit from a few days ago. And can you believe it, right there at the top of the Thursday Style section was an article (linked below) about, you guessed it, nouveau styles of arranging for one’s funeral. How folks are hiring party planners, what some call “funeral concierges,” to organize and carry out all sorts of new and exciting ways to have funerals so the bereaved can even have a good time right there at the grave site.

I’m not making this up.

Of course, this has social implications, read this is another manifestation of Baby Boomer behavior. Since BBs want to control all aspects of their lives, they also want to control all aspects of their deaths. So now, beyond the traditional prepaid funeral arrangements in which you choose a gravesite and coffin, paying for them and all other arrangements in advance (limos, flowers, the small or large chapel), you get to select the catering and tribute video to be shown at your funeral.

One fellow who loved golf more than anything else asked in advance that his service be conducted on the 18th hole of his favorite golf course. (It is not known if he asked for a final postmortem Mulligan.) Another chap who drove an ice cream truck had it pulled up next to his gravesite and arranged (again in advance) for everyone to have a Mr. Softee after the prayers and burial. It does get hot out there in some of those cemeteries.

And to think all I had come up with thus far, in addition to the ashes distribution plan, was for Rona to arrange for Roy Rodgers’ version of Happy Trails to be played at my sent off. It’s obviously time for me to get with the program!