#wicker caskets also look nice

[silverfactory]

there are a lot of ugly caskets in this world. listen….perhaps i am not an arbiter of funerary trends but if i owned a funeral home i would make the only option a tasteful rectangle made out of maple or poplar. no embroidery or metal statuettes of the pieta or brushed metal or ruffles. handles are on thin ice.

[thebibliosphere]

“What kind of funeral do you want?” He asks, continuing to hold my hand as he reaches up to shift gears. We know we shouldn’t and we know it’s not safe, but we can’t seem to let go. “Have you ever thought about that?”

“Yeah. I dunno though.”

“You’ve thought about it but you don’t know?”

“I know my parents would want it to be Christian.”

“Well,” he says trying to sound tactful as he reaches with my hand again to flip the turn signal, “there’s a very probable chance they’ll already be dead by then.”

“I know, but just in case they’re not, you may have to fight them over it.”

“Noted.”

There’s a beat of silence, the muted tones of the radio a background of indistinct noise and the occasional base rythmn bouncing through the speakers like a heartbeat. We talk for a while about other things–family, the past, how we feel about assisted death. I’m a firm believer that having a good death is as important as leading a good life and I’d rather not hurt anyone with it if I can. I’m rather Prathcettarian in that regard. He’s less certain, but understands why I feel the way I do and respects that.

“Don’t bother with a casket.”

“No?”

“No, those things pollute the earth, all that glue and varnish and shit. Don’t even embalm me if you can avoid it, I don’t wanna poison the earth.”

“What do you want then, would you rather be cremated?”

Earlier his cousin had talked about what he wants. He wants to be cremated, but rather than spend his afterlife in an urn or scattered in some solemn affair, he wants his remains to be put into a firework. He wants his family to light the fuse and jettison him into the night sky and be dispersed in a shower of fire and color. There’s a certain appeal to that, and I wonder momentarily if ashes can be turned into biodegradable glitter.

“I dunno. There’s eco friendly wicker basket things. You could do that, put me under a tree. Or have me cremated and turned into one of those bio pot things that turns into a tree. I want a tree.”

“A tree,” he nods, “what kind?”

“Dunno, one I’m not allergic to.”

It’s not particularly funny, but it gets a laugh anyway.

“What do you want?”

“Dunno, never really thought about it.”

“What, no grand casket, no horse and carriages?”

That gets a smile. His taste has always veered toward the expensive. His wedding suit cost more than my dress.

“Nah. Something simple…”

“Not Catholic?”

“Dunno, part of me thinks they got my birth, why not my death. But on the other hand, fuck em, y'know?”

“They didn’t get your birth, they got your christening, there’s a difference.”

“True.”

“…do you believe in God? I mean would you want the last rites? I feel I should know something like that…”

A shrug. “I believe in something.”

“…we could buy a plot and get buried under the same tree?”

He nods again. “We could. That’d be nice.”

There’s another silence, drawn out by dodging through afternoon traffic as we drive home, and I’m struck wondering how many other people at the stop light might also be grieving or feeling like the world has a void in it where a person ought to be.

I kept expecting to see him all through the wake, kept expecting to hear his laugh at some joke, specifically to be the one telling the joke, ready to hug and laugh and set the world right with a little bit of kindness. Instead it was our voices retelling the stories, mimicking mannerisms and holding ourselves together with fragile smiles and too bright eyes. It’s some small comfort to know I’ll never not be able to think of love and kindness and laughter and not think of him. It means he’ll never truly be gone.

“I want a mosoleum actually.”

“Of course you fucking do.”

“What? Not just for me! I mean it’d be for my whole family.”

“I wanted a tree.”

“We can still have our tree. I meant more a place to have all our names. A place for family rememberemce.” There’s a pause and I can just see the smile tugging at his mouth out the corner of my eye. “Carved from marble.”

“Yep, there it is.”

“You know, for my brothers descendents to come visit. I’m doing it for them.”

“Uhu, sure. What about our descendants?”

Another shrug. Another potentially painful topic for another time. But we’re home now and we have to let go of each other if we want to get out the car, and there’s a small part of my brain that thinks ‘there’s a metaphor there’ and I can’t help but roll my eyes because even when I haven’t slept for 24 hours and haven’t been able to eat for grief, there’s still a part of my brain that’s On and wired, looking for the story that’ll make sense of everything. Which I suppose is only human.

Like grief and loss, but also love.

Especially love.