Funeral

I want to be wrapped in linen cloth, buried, and have a tree planted over me when I die. I think it would be good for my family to see a nice big tree instead of a piece of marble...something living, as opposed to something cold and dead. They'll know my actual body went into the earth and helped create new life.

I've never understood people who want their bodies burned, every scrap of nutrients washed away with fire, their bones crunched up and put into little pots to sit above the fireplace (or in a closet for 30 years like my great-aunts). It seems completely unnatural and wasteful to me.

A lot of funereal procedures seem like denial to me. I've been to a few in my lifetime...inevitably, some idiot gets up and says "he's not really dead...he will live on forever" like it's some kind of shameful, horrible thing to be dead. That kind of attitude really just prolongs the grieving process - remember, that five-step program in which the last step is "acceptance."

When did decomposition become a bad word?

I've heard a lot of people, including those closest to me, say they fear the "worms eating them." It's a silly phrase...it's just emotional hyperbole, if you think about it. Everything you eat was once a dead thing. Food is energy, and all living things BECOME food for something else, or they become dirt in which new food is grown. It's not even a religious thing. That's just a fact.

So everyone has eaten generations of dead things, which in turn prolong everyone's lives. I can't imagine, as a non-theist, a more noble or fulfilling duty. My cells will be passed on to generations upon generations of living things, fostering life in countless billions of forms. I'll finally travel the world!

I think a lot of people don't see themselves as a part of this world, and like to believe that they will remain separate from it even after death - "living forever" in some non-corporeal state of eternal benevolence. Human arrogance, I guess. Profoundly depressing to me is the idea that we were not meant to participate in the "circle of life"...that we're somehow above it.

People have told me that I am meant for great things, and I've never liked hearing that. They're always things that are great on a very small scale, like winning awards or making money or inspiring cute children to doodle in the margins. Let's get it out there: I'm largely useless. I create images with little meaning or value. I have no delusions about my worth. When people say I am valuable to the world, they mean I am valuable to humans. I don't doubt that I am, but I wouldn't want to float on a cloud above the world I grew up in and loved. I want to be an integral, intimate part of it, for as long as it exists. I don't "deserve better" in the afterlife because my brain functions faster than a squirrel or an anteater.

I hope my loved ones take my funereal wishes to heart, when the time comes. Funerals are meant to be for the survivors, but I would like to think that someone would remember how I feel about this. It would give me a lot of comfort to know that there's more waiting for my body than just oblivion...and I've always wanted to be a tree.