FINALLY ALL IS HUBRIS

My wife and I argue, gently of course, about how we want to have our remains disposed of. (You see, even with the morbid stuff I am “Looking Ahead.” We disagree. Both of us are unbelievers, but for some atavistic reason she wants a “proper” burial and interment in a nice, neighbourly Jewish Cemetery. I, on the other hand want, contrary to Jewish Law (which makes no difference to her either) to be cremated. Since the remains are barred from the traditional cemetery, I will go to someplace like Mount Pleasant. Fine with me. A couple of my great friends, recently deceased, also opted to flout religious law and become ashes and be buried in secular surroundings.

I mused about all this as I watched a news item about a cabinet maker cum casket maker in Milan. You can leave this world in a $20,000 handmade casket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and adorned with exquisite carved wood details. Not prefab carving, but done painstakingly by skilled cabinet makers.

My sense of just about everything is offended. But I am offended by funerals anyway. The pomp, the ceremony, the long faces, the endless tributes, the reverence and above all, the sepulchral (respectful?) quiet – people murmuring quietly, exchanging shared sorrows.

I’m fine with the sorrows. I just think we’ve turned dying into denial of dying. Like the Pharoahs, we want to enter the world beyond with as much ceremony as possible.

I am not sure that my wife and I will ever resolve the problem. But legally, as I understand, you can leave all the instructions you want, but finally your surviving family will make the decisions.

I couldn’t care less. I certainly think that anyone who needs a hand-made casket must be denying death.

I’ll never be “ready,” but that certainly makes no difference. Gone is gone.